


A Superlative for Different

by missespaintadventures



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Striders, Emotional Manipulation, Gods AU, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Soulmates, Stridercest - Freeform, Underage Drinking, non sburb au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-04-01 01:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4000312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missespaintadventures/pseuds/missespaintadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After thirteen years of radio silence, Dave walks back into Dirk's life and fucks up everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for my friend Ally as a present. It was supposed to be a short little oneshot and then it grew wings and a legs and a plot and Rose wanted to have so much depth and I couldn't stop the entire thing from snowballing out of my control aaahaha oh well. (EDIT: Ah this is officially discontinued I guess. I might post more chapters at some point but odds aren't good.)

  
Realistically, you knew you had met before.

Mom had always told you, as she shampooed your hair when you were a tiny kid or when she was sipping on an especially warm cup of tea on an especially cold day and feeling especially nostalgic, that your brother had been twenty when he left. That you had been two years old when he packed his bags and vanished. This gave you two years of interactions, two years of him helping Mom feed you or changing your diapers.

Sometimes, when the all the lights in your room were as dark as the night outside your window, and you would have sworn on your life that the howling of the wind was from a beast with claws, and the outline of your jacket draped over the back of your desk chair was a withered evil witch, you would close your eyes. And slow your mind. And convince yourself that you could remember his voice. A voice that was all things warm and safe. On nights like these, you would whisper his name to yourself, as if you were scared you would forget it.

_Dave. Dave. Dave._

Realistically, you knew that you had spent two years under the same roof. Even though your brother had been ready to move out and start a life of his own years before you were even born, he had insisted on staying at home to help take care of you. You were constantly reminded of much help he had provided for your mother. You knew she laughed at the memory of the tiny bald baby who was quick to cry and who refused to eat or sleep unless he was being held, but even you knew that you must have hell to take care of.

You knew that you had known him. If was a fact you were quite confident of, but that didn’t stop you from losing your shit the first time you remember seeing him.

The day it happened, you had stayed after school with the rest of the the second graders to rehearse singing the song about starting as a sapling and growing into a strong tree, and to practice walking across the stage when your teacher called your name. After everyone had stumbled across the faded cafeteria stage and mumbled through their parts, the teachers had released you to go home. When you were waiting on the curb outside the school for your mom to pick you up, something compelled you to glance across the street. Maybe it was something in the wind or maybe it was pure chance, but you had looked up. And there he had been. Nothing overwhelmingly distinct about his features (especially given that his red eyes were hidden behind shades), but you had known that this man was your brother like you knew your own name. You remember being able to feel his eyes trained on you- he had been leaning casually against a black car, watching your movements with the same face that stared up at you from family picture albums.

He didn’t acknowledge you or walk closer or really do anything at all, save for making you instantly feel like you had been dunked with freezing water. You knew that his arms were the same arms that used to send you to sleep every single night, the same arms that had fed you and cut your hair, but that didn’t stop the awful crushing feeling of unfamiliarity that wrapped a cold hand around your lungs and squeezed and didn’t let go until you were slamming the door to your room shut and breaking down into sobs that shook your entire frame.

The night that you first remembered seeing him was the first night that you went without sleep. The next day you didn’t go to your second-grade graduation. It hadn’t had been hard to convince your mother you were sick. Instead, you stayed in your room reading James and the Giant Peach and looking at photo after photo of Dave feeding tiny Dirk, and Dave making a funny face as Mom messed up his hair, Dave asleep with a tiny baby sleeping just as soundly on Dave’s chest . It wasn’t until years later that you noticed how twisted it was that you had comforted yourself from the reality that you had seen you brother with imagining what you brother would say if he was here with you. It was like your small, seven year old mind had created two Dave’s; one that existed only in the polaroids and in stories you mom whispered to you, and one that was a living, breathing, very tangible man who drove a black car. The Dave that drove the black car conjured up a sour taste and made you feel like that one time you had to stay home from school because you ate old mayonnaise. You liked the Dave from the photo albums more. That Dave was your Dave. Your Dave never made you feel the way black-car Dave made you feel. After all, the Dave frozen in the photos never abandoned you and Mom.

Two years passed.

Your eyes were dull as you watched your reflection in the bathroom mirror while your mom fussed over your blond hair that was sticking up in a familiar mess. She was desperately trying to get it to lay flat, or really just lay into some semblance of order, glancing at her dainty gold watch every once in a while, phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear as she anxiously asked her girlfriend for advice.

"I already tried putting water on it, it only made things worse. Look, you fix your hair everyday, I just need a few pointers... no, Darling, don't be mad you know I don't think your hair is messy just...." You looked away from your own eyes to to your mother's expression of barely concealed stressed, "Ok yes I can try giving him a hat, I suppose." Her voice was clipped. "Thank you, Kanaya." The phone was placed on the bathroom counter next to you and, after spending a few more minutes on getting some sort of order to your hair, Mom looked up to meet your eyes in the mirror. She smiled sadly and sighed.

"You ready for your first day of fourth grade, Sweetheart?"

You shruged. An honest response. She huged you.

"You’ll do wonderfully, as long as you are nice and mind your teachers," She pulled back and shared with you a mischievous grin, "Although If you don't comply completely it's quite alright, you're too smart to for those silly teachers anyways."

She was right. School wasn’t hard for you. The material was simple and your mind was sharp. The people were the most confusing part, but they weren't so bad. Most of them were dumb and therefore their opinions of you were negligible so you didn’t feel pressured to impress them or make friends. The teachers called you an 'old soul’.

You skipped fifth grade.

Middle school was very different.

For starters, everyone was older than you, and it showed. Sure, you had only skipped one year, but apparently that year was the transition year from ‘little boy’ to ‘preteen’. There were people in your gym class that had to wear deodorant and who talked about how hot the girls were, and you stuck out like a sore thumb. Hell, you still had a Buzz Lightyear toothbrush. One thing that hadn’t changed was you were still one of the smartest kids in your grade, but when the teacher was lecturing on the formula for the volume of a cone, your brow would furrow and your mouth would twist slightly, and after class you would stay behind and ask the teacher to explain just one more time. As Christmas break approached, you received a new seating chart in your Geography class. For the rest of the year you sat next to a girl with a neon pink backpack and who would always raise her hand first to volunteer to find Africa on the map or to explain to the class what a ‘plateau’ was. She didn’t talk to you for the first week that you sat next to each other, but one day she abruptly twisted around to look at you and said, “Do you play Pokemon?”

You blinked. “Isn’t that a show?”

“No! Well- ok yes, but it’s more importantly a game. I need someone that has Fire Red or Leaf Green so I can trade my Onix and get a Steelix.”

“...what are those?”

She rolled her eyes, “Whatever. Forget about it, I'll just trade with Janie at lunch,” She tapped her pen against her desk slowly, looking at you. “So what’s your deal?”

You don’t respond, just look at her. You didn’t talk to people your age unless it was to say ‘sorry’, as you pushed your way through the halls and, judging from this experience so far, that had been a good call. Everything this girl was saying just served to confuse you more. She took you silence as an opportunity to keep talking.

“I've been sittin' next to you for a week now and you haven’t said a word. Also, all your pencils are pink.” She was right. You had asked for pink pencils from your mom a few months into your middle school career because you were sick of guys ‘borrowing’ you pencils and never giving them back. Now, no one asked. Well. Girls still asked, but they always returned them to you so it wasn’t a problem. When a month had passed and you still had all six of your original pencils in your possession you were so pleased with yourself that you swiped an entire can of Dr. Pepper without asking Mom first and drank it all by yourself.

You shrugged, not knowing what answer she was looking for.

The girl seemed to be thinking, before her face split into a wide smile. “Well, anyone who has pink pencils is an okay kid in my book. Sit with us at lunch today.” She turned back to work on her Geography assignment, only to look back at you moments later, “If you wanna.” She started to go back but stopped herself and quickly added, “you really should, though. Yeah. Okay.” She turned her attention back to her paper. The tips of her ears were red.

When lunch came around you sat where you always did. Next to some eighth graders who played minecraft on their phones for the entire forty minutes and smelled faintly of old socks. You had almost finished your sandwich when the seat next to you moved and someone sat down. It was the girl from Geography.

She didn't say anything. There was a heavy thickness in air between you, like she had just invited you to a party and you had responded with a transparent 'I'll think about it!' when both of you knew you weren't going to show up. You looked down at your plate.

" ... I couldn't find your table." You mutter. You almost visibly winced, knowing the girl was smart enough to see the complete lack of veracity in your words. To your surprise, she smiled. She had a nice smile.

“I’ll show you where we are, c’mon!” She tugged on your sleeve as she jumped out of her chair, “Do you want me to carry your bag for you? Here-” She didn’t wait for an answer, hoisting your backpack over her shoulders, “C’mon, dude. Get 'cha lunch and let's bounce.”  
  
You walked as a unit back to the table where one other girl, a plump brunette with sweet features, was sitting. You had kind of expected more people, from how quickly and earnestly you had been pulled over here.

“Janie, this is Dirk. Dirk, Janie. We are like BFFL’s,” The girl spoke this last bit to you quietly, and Janie rolled her eyes but you caught her smile.

“Roxy, why are you harassing this poor kid? He obviously doesn’t want to be here, look at him.”

Roxy (so that was her name, cool) was unperturbed by Janie’s claims, “Naw, he do. He do very much want to be here, dontcha, Dirk?”

“Yeah.” The word spilled out of your mouth too quick, without you even thinking it through. But it seemed like the right thing to say in retrospect, confirmed even more through the way Roxy’s smile lit up the entire room.

Having friends was weird. Nice, but weird. You sat with Roxy and Jane, as you grew to know her as, every day for the rest of the year. When the school announced they were going to launch a robotics club Roxy had all but sobbed her eyes out in an effort for you to join it with her and you begrudgingly agreed to go to one meeting. Which turned into two meetings. Which turned into going over to your house together after the meetings to take apart toasters and remotes and trying to put them back together. And even after Roxy lost interest in the club you kept going. You liked robots. You understood them. Everything they did could be controlled and that struck you as perfect. You told your brother’s photographs about all the things you have done with Roxy and Jane when you got home. About what you had done together and the funny things everyone said. Your mom once caught you telling a story to him and sat you down and talked to you about ‘moving on’ for the good part of an hour. You started using a whisper to tell Dave your stories so Mom wouldn't hear them too.

When Jane found out that you enjoyed reading, she promptly lent you her entire collection of Nancy Drew. You read them all. You liked Nancy Drew because they were (unintentionally) funny and she liked them because she invested herself in the cases. You would entertain each other by referencing the more iconic moments and imitating the characters, leaving Roxy hilariously bewildered. When Roxy pulled a new kid to your lunch table much like she had coerced you, he quickly fell in step with your inside jokes. He also was fond of Nancy Drew. Although, unlike both you and Jane, he liked the books for their excitement. You remembered raising an eyebrow and calling him out on that.

“When I imagine ‘exciting books’, Nancy Drew is not the first option that comes to mind.”

“I know, but they’re the most exciting books my Grandmother owns…”

You found this adorable, but didn’t say as much out loud. Roxy threw her hands up, ever a drama queen.

“Am I the only living creature alive who has not read Nancy freggin Drew?!”

Jane tisked, “Maybe to find others like yourself you should expand your search to living creatures that are not alive?”

“Oh, shut it, Janie.”

The new kid was named Jake. Through the means of attempted jokes and shitty puns he slowly won his way to be just as important to you as Roxy and Jane. By the start of eighth grade, you actually found yourself enjoying your time with Jake more than your time with the other two. You tried not to feel guilty, but the ‘we just need a boys night’ excuse was wearing thin and the look of hurt on Roxy’s face every time you used it was hard to ignore.

  
Roxy had a Christmas party that year. You showed up fifteen minutes before the party was supposed to start, wearing a green knitted sweater and a santa hat you had bought for twenty cents. Roxy’s mother was the one who answered the door.

“Merry Christmas!” She sang, pulling you into a hug as soon as you walked in. Her brown hair tickled. You tried not to pull away from the hug too quickly, scared of coming across as rude. When Mrs. Lalonde released you she called over her shoulder, “Sweetie, one of your friends are here!”

You took a small step back. “It’s nice to finally get to meet you, Mrs. Lalonde.”

“Same to you, Honey! I’ve heard so many good things, so many good things! And what’s you name again, Dearie? I am sorry but I do have trouble with all the names of Roxy’s little friends.”

“Dirk.”

You knew you imagined it, but Mrs. Lalonde’s smile faltered for a moment before returning, “Well, Dirk, please, step inside. Roxy’s in the kitchen!”

You nodded and walked inside and Mrs. Lalonde closed the door behind you. Someone in the house must adore Christmas, because every surface was covered in decorations, red green and gold meeting your eyes almost everywhere you looked. Even covered in garland and lights, it was obvious that Roxy’s house was significantly nicer than yours and you instantly had to fight off feelings of being out of place. This was Roxy, your first and best friend, it was ridiculous to feel like you didn’t belong next to her.

“ _You’re_ early,” Her voice was greatly amused. You looked up to see Roxy standing in the hall, drying her hands on a towel, which she tossed on to a counter before walking over to you.

“Thought I might be able to help set up.” Truth was you felt guilty for ditching her so many times to be with Jake. There was a voice in your head telling you that showing up fifteen minutes early to her party was a piss poor substitute for the countless hours you were trying to remedy. You told that voice to shut its stupid mouth immediately.

Roxy had reached you by this point, and gestured wildly at all the decorations, “As you can see, there is not much setting up left to do,” she grabbed your wrist and gave it a slight tug, “Just means we’ll have to do somethin’ else. C’mon I’ll give you the tour.”

Every inch of the house was somehow festive. Your favorite detail was the Christmas tree, which looked like it was five seconds away from collapsing under the strain of all the ornaments and garland and the huge, tacky star the was practically scraping the ceiling. You told Roxy as much and she laughed.

“Of course that’s your favorite. Of all the effort I put into everything else, of course you like the one thing that my mom and I just slapped together. Of course. Of course,” She smiled at you fondly, “I’m glad you like the shitty tree, Dirk.”

“I love this shitty tree. I want to take this shitty tree home and do terrible things with it.”

“Maybe take the poor thing out for a nice evening first.”

“Good idea. We can’t have this Perfect Ten turning me down, it is vital to first deliver a proper amount of wooing. First I would take this tree to a movie at the discount theater.”

“Might as well go that extra mile and add a romantic dinner. How do you feel about McDonalds?”  
  
“I feel good about McDonalds as long as he pays, I can’t be breaking bank.”

“And who says romance is dead...”

“Not that lucky piece of shrubbery.”

Roxy gave you a full tour, not shying away from the attic or the laundry room or any of the closets, cracking jokes at each other and talking about who in your class was most likely to die before the age of twenty. It was nice, getting to spend time with just her, and you were crushed again under the weight of the guilt you had of brushing her off these pasts months. She was funnier than Jake, she was nicer than Jake… but Jake made everything more raw and exciting, and there was sometime ineffably valuable about the way his every expression was written on his face and how his skin always felt warm when your hand brushed his arm by accident.

As nice as it was to spend time with your Lalonde, nothing could have stopped the doorbell ringing with the arrival of the next guest. And then ranging again. And again. And again. And you didn’t know how it had ever escaped your notice that Roxy was basically friends with a thousand people. Well okay, the total number of guest fell around thirty, but thirty people was ten times the number of friends that you had. It didn’t escape your attention that one kid who wasn’t invited was Jake English (which was sad but also expected, knowing how cold Roxy had been to Jake the more you had ignored her in favor of him).

A few hours into the party, Roxy found you sitting with Jane, the two of you off to the side. You had given Jane your santa hat a few minutes ago, which Roxy pointed out with a smile. She seemed happy. When you asked her how she was liking her party, Roxy waggled her eyebrows and sat down next to Jane, pecking her on the cheek, leaving Jane casually pretending to swoon.

“It’s supa' fun, but we would all have more fun in you guys joined!”

“That has to be the largest pile of steaming horseshit I have ever heard. Jane and I both are the worst party creatures. I’m still struggling to understand why you even invited us.”

“Honestly, Rox. Enjoy your party, don't worry about us. Dirk and I are having a great time with our tiny, two-man gossip extravaganza over here on our plush couch.”

“It is a really plush couch, isn’t is.”

“The plushiest.”

You nod seriously at Jane in agreement while Roxy huffs, “Guys I’m serious. C’mon Dirk, party with me.”

You were spared having to duck out again by Roxy's mom walking up and asking Roxy if she was ready to order the pizzas. Roxy said to wait five minutes and that she would go around and collect everyones order in a minute before dismissing her mom with thanks and a smile.

You changed the subject, wanting to deter Roxy from pressing her earlier point, "You must take after your dad."

Roxy's smile wavered, "What?"

"You look nothing like your mom, is all I mean."

There was a heavy silence. Roxy's smile was completely gone by this point and Jane was suddenly very interested in the fabric on the arm of the couch.

“You might be right, your guess is as good as mine.” Her voice was twisted with forced humor and you instantly understood. After all, it was the same thing you would have said, had the conversation been flipped.

“You haven’t meet your dad,” It was a statement.

She rolled her eyes, “I haven’t even met my mom.”

"What do you mean, she was just here asking… oh.” The heat rising up to your face made you want to punch yourself. Dirk Strider everyone, the Master of Tact. She looking nothing like her mom and she had never met her dad, any imbecile could put the two together, “You’re... you're adopted.”

She nodded coldly, not looking at you.

You fell back against the back of the couch rubbing your eyes and feeling suddenly very tired. Your stomach had somehow turned into a churning pit of guilt and you wondered how you could have been so stupid. Admittedly, this was your first time meeting her mother, but you could had peiced that together in any other fashion. "How did I not know this..."

Roxy just shook her head and muttered, "Like you don’t already know," kicking the carpet with the toe of her shoe.

What? The hell was she talking about now. You waited for her to look you, not knowing how to respond.

" _God_ do you not see how blind you are?” You felt a bubble of amusement from her word choice but stayed quiet, "I'm not upset that you didn't know I was adopted, but can you have to see how this is a symptom of how much you-" Her voice broke off and she ran her fingers through her hair. Her next words were rushed and sounded like they were spilling from a girl who was suddenly twice as small, "How much you don't care about me which kind of really sucks major ass, because last I heard we were best friends."

"...Uh. I...” All your previous amusement was dissolved by her last remarks. You felt slightly dizzy, but your voice was level when you spoke, “We are best friends, Roxy.” You glanced at Jane, who looked like she would rather be anywhere else than here, desperately and silently pleading her to help.

You weren’t expecting her to take Roxy’s side.

“Look, that’s just hard to believe you’re always just really emotionally distant from us.” Jane’s voice was barely audible but to you it rang like gunfire.

“Emotionally distant.” You repeated in monotone, baffled. You put your head in your hands, “I care about you both.”

“If you cared, don’t you think you would know that I was freggin' adopted? I know I’ve mentioned it before.”

Okay, didn't she just say that this wasn't about him not knowing that?? _Girls._ “I don’t know what to think right now,” your voice was sharper than you intended, mixing with the sounds of the party which seemed to be coming from very far away.

“Ok. Ok, let’s test this. What’s my favorite food?”

“... Are you serious.”

“Yes, I’ve never been more serious about anything. What is my favorite food.”

“... Yogurt?”

Roxy looked at Jane, who quickly said, “Lemon meringue pie.”

“What’s my cat’s name?”

“These are unfair questions! How am I supposed to know minute details about your life when I’m not even sure if we’ve talked about them before.”

“You just-! Ugh!” She pushed her fingertips against her temple, like you were the one being completely unreasonable, “You’re just supposed to know these things! We’ve been friends for three years, Strider, and when you care about people you remember things about them. Like their favorite foods.”

You run a hand through your hair, starting to feel agitated. What did Roxy know? That wasn’t proof that you cared at all. It was just proof that you didn’t know her favorite food. Of course JANE knew that it was lemon meringue pie, she probably cooked it for her all the time. It was a biased question. “Me not knowing your favorite foods equates to shit. I don’t even know what my mom’s favorite food is, okay? Why don’t-”

“What’s Jake’s favorite food?”  
  
Chicken tikki masala. You remembered because he had been talking about how great it was one day when you were walking from his house to the park and you had asked if he would let you try some, if his grandmother made it again. His eyes lit up as he smiled and promised that he would.

She shook her head, “Unbelieveable. You know, don’t you?”

Your silence was enough.

She was quiet for a minute, her lips pressed into a line. You thought that if the party had been just a little quieter you would been able to hear the sound of her patience snapping.

“Wow, this is a really shitty time to have this conversation,” Roxy muttered before saying, louder, “I’m really glad that Christmas break just started because I am going to need some time to get over this. To get over you, really.”

“Get _over_  me?”

“Yes, Captain Asshole of the S.S Douchebag. I need some time to get over you, because it’s not good to my psyche to have feelings for a piece of shit with the emotional capacity of a table cloth. God, and you know what what really sucks? I bet that if I had been dumb and shitty, you woulda liked me more.”

“Wow, damn. That is kind of a dig at me, maybe we should j-”

“It’s not a ‘dig at you’!” Her voice was loud. Not loud enough to cause a scene but loud enough to be filled with acidic resentment, “Everyone knows you love shitty things. The shittier the better! It’s why you like Nancy Drew and why you like that tree and- shit, it’s why you just _looove_ Jake, isn’t it? Stupid, _stupid_ Jake, with his pathetic addiction to his Grandmother and his ridiculous way of speaking.”

You take a deep breath, your veins suddenly filled with ice.

“Maybe I should go.”

“Then leave, I trust you can find the door,” And with that Roxy stood up and walked back into the crowd. You heard a few people asking her if everything was okay, but she assured them everything was and then announced that she was taking orders for pizza and for everyone to come find her.

Jane turned to you.

“Are you ok, Dear? She didn’t mean any of that,” She did. “She’s just upset.”

“I’m fine, thanks Jane.” Were you fine? You supposed you were, but your thoughts were too clouded with anger to be sure.

“If you need to call me later and talk about it, I’ll keep my phone close.”

“Thanks. See you around, Jane.”

You left out the back door, not wanting to push through the masses of people. The cold, December air calmed you down in a matter of moments. You had once heard of ‘anger’ being compared to a fire and you found it cathartic to imagine the biting cold slowly suffocating the flames burning in your lungs. You had never been good at holding onto any emotion for very long, and even now your anger was dissipating as quickly as it had came until you just felt hollow. Hollow, with a sour taste in your mouth, a rock in your throat and a knife in your gut. You watched your feet as they took you around the back of Roxy’s house, out her side gate and to the sidewalk, watching the way your shoes moved the grass.

You sent you mom a text to pick you up.

“Need a ride, Kid?”

You didn't look up. You were standing on the sidewalk a few feet to the left of Roxy’s yard so she couldn’t see you standing outside if she glanced out her front window. You pulled your arms around yourself and keep your head down. The voice probably wasn’t talking to you anyways.

You had about three seconds to think that before the voice called again, “Kid, hey.” Okay you were almost sure that was directed towards you. Your stomach knotted for a different reason, thinking suddenly about the videos you watch in school about 'stranger danger'. What were you supposed to do again? Run into a house? Scream fire? This was a nice neighborhood, but it was late and the sparse lights could also fight so much against the long, dark shadows that were only growing as the time ticked by. Your hand griped your shitty, outdated phone tighter, ready to dial the police if he tried to pull anything.  
  
You heard the man mutter something before he called your name.

“Dirk.”

You didn’t remember turning around.

Maybe you had been more shaken by your encounter with Roxy than you thought and now you were suffering at the hands of some vivid hallucination.

It was him. You felt a wave of your anger return.

Of course it was him. The one thing you needed after that conversation was to have him show up. You were too drained for this bullshit, what the hell, why did God hate you? (A large number of possible reasons jumped to mind, as if your subconscious had said ‘Glad you asked, shitdick! Here’s the running list so far!”)

“Dirk, we should talk,” His voice was clear and real and he was right there, he was real he was real. You took a step backwards.

It was almost dark outside but you could still distinguish his blond hair and the shape of his nose and the slope of his shoulders that could only be described as elegant. You would probably recognize him even if you could just barely make out his silhouette, after spending hours every week pouring over the same photographs again and again until you could have painted each one from memory. He was wearing aviators, just as he had been when you saw him the day before your graduation. You wished he would take them off so he would be like the Dave in your pictures. He glanced to the house you had just left and it occurred to you that if he had seen you leave out the side gate it must have been a sketchy scene from his perspective. He didn’t ask you to explain yourself. You had the faint feeling that he already knew.

“What time is Rose expecting you to be at your house?”

You had forgotten how to make your mouth do anything but clench your teeth. You stared at him instead of answering.

“... Okay, we don't like talking. That's cool. Can you hold up the number of fingers that correlates to the hour that Rose is expecting you to be back at your house?”

That snapped out of your shock, and you said your first words to him since your nonsensical blabberings of a child.

“She’s supposed to pick me up in twenty minutes.”

He was quiet for a moment, “Alright, that’s unfortunate. Oh well, just a small change in the plan,” He jerked his head to where his black car was parked, “Get in.”

Without waiting to see if you were coming, he turned around and walks back to the drivers side, opening the door before looking back at you. He waited.

“... I don’t know.”

He grinned, just a tiny movement, “Are you afraid? What could you possibly be scared of, I’m your brother.”

The sentence almost made you shiver. Your brother. Your unreachable and intangible brother who plagued your thoughts with despair as often as he comforted them, and here he was. Right in front of you. Asking you to get into his car as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he had never left. What the hell was going on right now. You glanced to the house holding the party you had just came from and then back to the black car. You should go back inside and wait until your mom arrived. You should tell him to leave, that he’s had his opportunity to be a part of your life and he threw it out without batting an eye. You should not calmly be walking to the passenger side door and sliding into the seat. You should not be.

Shit, the seats were heated. This was a nice ride. You looked at the radio while Dave started the engine. It was decked out with more buttons than you knew a car radio could have, flashing all sorts of strange colors. You tried to decide what they all did from their labels. You wished you could open up the paneling and see how it looked inside.

You felt him glance at you, at the stereo then back at you before he asked “Do you want to listen to some music?”

You reached out a hand to try and see if you could find the power button. You realized with a jolt that your hand was shaking and you dropped it down to your lap before he could notice, "I don't really listen to music.” It wasn't a lie, it just wasn't why you dropped your hand.

Dave tisked disapprovingly and you instantly, desperately wished you could take back your words. “We’ll have to fix that.” He put the car into drive and peeled away from the curve. You wished it bothered you that you had no idea where you were going. You kept glancing at him.

“So you’re in what, seventh grade?”

“Eighth. I skipped fifth.” At least your voice wasn’t shaking too. Dave hummed.

“Nice. That’s good, good for you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” It was dark outside and the only light was coming from Dave’s headlights and the occasional street light that passed. You wondered how he could see anything, wearing those shades, and gave a small effort not to stare at him too openly while you tried to study what you could see of his features in the poor lighting, “It wasn’t really a big event, I never considered it to be impressive.”

“I think it is. That’s an entire year of your life you get to have when you graduate a year quicker than everyone else. Think of all the things you can do in a year.” And think of all the things you can miss in thirteen of them. “And hell, who knows how things will be for you when you graduate. You could be doing some cool shit.”

His fingers were tapping to a beat from their rest on the steering wheel. You wondered if he was bored or it it was a nervous habit. You could see it being either.

You watched his hands. You wondered if your hands would look like that, someday. God, what if you looked exactly like him? You supposed you looked similar enough as it was but… the thought was more than surreal. The quiet started to stretch uncomfortably.

“Yeah, who knows. Look, maybe it was just my own, personal interpretation of your thirteen years of dead silence but I thought you wanted less than nothing to do with me, so like. What are you doing here?” Yes, perfect, no longer uncomfortable. Exactly the most comfortable and friendly conversational topic you could have ever conjured. By this point you weren’t even trying to disguise the fact that you were staring at him. If you could have twisted your seat to be facing him it wouldn’t have made any difference. Dave was quiet for a beat and you wondered if he was felt guilty. Immediately afterward you wondered if you were supposed to feel the rush of satisfaction you got at the possibility.  
  
“I wanted to see you," He started, his voice careful, "I thought we were overdue for a talk." You almost laugh. Overdue?? You hadn't heard his voice in over a decade, hadn't seen him in half of one. Talking with him had become 'overdue' many years ago. "Hell, you're almost in high school by this point. You’re like… I mean I don’t even know if you have any hobbies or, shit, I didn’t know what your voice sounded like until a minute ago. I just thought we should, you know, try a solid ‘get to know each other’ session or go get ice cream or talk or- fuck, I don’t know compare results for online personality quizzes. Something, anything."

“Do you take online personality quizzes?”

“It’s happened once or twice.”

“...like the ‘What Disney Princess Are You’ ones? Or more in the neighborhood of ‘Myers Briggs’?” You don’t give yourself time to think about what he had just said. You didn’t want to.

“I’ve dabbled in both.”

“So what are you, Cinderella or Belle or Ariel or what?”

“I kind of thought that I was going to be the one asking questions here, Dirk,” You could hear the lilt of amusement in his words and it did a funny thing to your stomach. You bit your bottom lip to try and repress the feeling before responding.

“Alright. Then ask away,”

“Favorite color,”

“Hot pink.”

“Favorite food?”

“A toss up between deep-fried crocodile tongue and chocolate covered gummy bears. I can never pick.”

He glanced at you, concerned and confused, before he continued, "Favorite s- oh, right you don't listen to music. Any hobbies?”

“Sucking dick.”

“What the h- dude, I’m trying to extend an olive branch here, how am I supposed to send you awful birthday gifts in the mail like some passive aggressive aunt if I don’t know anything about you? I might end up getting you something you actually like, God forbid. Can you at least try and answer my questions with a morsel of sincerity?”

You looked out the window, not answering. He hadn't left Roxy's neighborhood. Guess you were just taking a block.

He sighed, a quiet sound that you felt more than heard.

"Do you have a cell phone?"

You nodded, "Yeah."

"Awesome," without taking his eyes off the road he picked up his wallet from one of the cup holders and tossed it to you. You let it fall in your lap and stared at it before picking the thing up. The leather was old and soft when you moved your thumb across the front. At least your hands had stopped shaking, "There’s a few cards inside with my number."

You looked up at him. He was giving you his number. The idea that you were ever going to see again had been laughable thirty minutes ago and now you were being given a way to contact him whenever you wanted.

You opened his wallet to find a credit card, a driver's license, eleven dollars in cash, a membership rewards card to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, a few receipts and, of course, his business cards. You slid the top paper card out and read it over, surprised at what you found.

“Writer and director? You make movies??”

He seemed slightly surprised. “Yes, I make movies. Have you heard of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff?” You actually had, just in passing from your classmates and from ads here and there. You told him as much. “Cool, I made those and quite a few more, honestly. You’ve probably never heard of the others. No offence to you, they just didn’t make it as far.” Dave heaved a melodramatic sigh, before muttering something again. You caught the words “...goddamnit, Rose you could’ve at least… but to take away SBAHJ? Raise your kid right holy shit…”

You felt a twinge of annoyance. Your mom was a good mother.

But man, a director. Directors only made a lot of money if their movies were good and, from at least the looks of his car, Dave made more than a comfortable amount of money. You were excited to get home and marathon everything he had been even the slightest bit involved with. It was weird think that all this time Dave had been living his own life. You felt moronic for not considering it before, that he had a job and a place of his own and probably a girlfriend or a wife. You tried to imagine Dave walking into an apartment, setting down his keys and briefcase and being welcomed home with a quick kiss from some brunette in an apron. Gross. You really, really, really hoped this wasn't true.

Dave continued, “That’s my work number. It should connect you with someone and then you just ask to talk to me and they’ll put you through.” You nodded, feeling a tug of cold disappointment pulling you down from your elation. Of course it wasn’t his personal number. Calm down, Dirk, you aren’t important to him, it was childish to fool yourself into thinking otherwise. You looked out the window again, taking a deep breath to try and level your thinking, to allow all your gears to realign. This was the real world, and in the real world your brother had more important thing to care about than you. Get used to it, you idiot.

The car slowed down and you realized you had arrived back at the home of the Lalonde's, parked a ways down the street. Dave pulled in along the curve like he had when he picked you up.

He killed the engine.

There was a bit heavy quiet until he tapped the glass of his window, looking at the house, “Fun party?”

“No.”

“Oh. I assumed from the way you had snuck out the back door that it had been pretty killer.”

You ignore both his sarcasm and the warmth in your face knowing that he had seen your exit, “I 'snuck out the back' because the host who happened to be my best friend said in so many words that she was in love with me and then got mad, so I excused myself.”

“Why did she get mad?”

You shrugged, not wanting to think about it. You would talk it out with your pictures when you got home.

Dave looked at your for a long while and you looked just past him, your eyes trained on Roxy's house, like you expected her to come running out the front door.

His hand was the same temperature as yours when he twisted his fingers around your own.

Your eyes slipped out of focus and you froze, not daring to breathe.

Holy shit. He was holding your hand.

A fresh wave of anger collided with a wave of panic, and somehow the two forces broke against the other and fell flat into a mostly numb haze of confusion. If you didn't think, didn't feel, didn't move, it was easier to think of this man as your Dave, the Dave that you would fetch the stars for. You somehow managed to twitch your fingers towards your palm, not to return the gesture but to act on your pathetic need to keep his hand there forever. As if, somehow, this time, you could stop him from leaving.

He seemed to relax, leaning his head back against the seat and moving his thumb in lazy circles against the back of your palm. Was this normal? Did brothers do this? You honestly didn't give a shit. Dave gave you a slow smile, not the same polite smiles you saw in your photos, but a new genuine smile, full of light and life and if that wasn't bad enough he whispered, "This is nice." 

"Holding hands?" 

"Yeah." He wiggles his fingers a little, playfully. And then the smile was gone and replaced by something more thoughtful and careful, "I think I like being around you, Dirk."

You searched for his eyes behind his sunglasses and your fingers curled tighter around his. It wasn’t fair. You felt a stab of the old, familiar pain that you thought had faded into dull longing. If he liked being around you why did he leave? His fingers twisted around your own as perfectly as if they had been sculpted together, as if you had been born to stay just like this.

You were just barely hanging on to being a mess and he seemed perfectly fine. He was successful and happy and rich and famous and confident and every single day you looked at his photographs and wordlessly prayed that somehow, someday, you wouldn’t have to live with the hole that he left in your heart.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

“Then why did you leave? I'm trying to imagine what must have been your reasoning and I can't think of anything." You hated how weak your voice sounded, hated how speaking the truth sent daggers in your heart, but you had to ask.

Now it was Dave's turn to look out the window. He was still for a long while, save for the thumb that was still absentmindedly moving against your skin, and you almost talked again before he spoke. “I didn’t want to."

Fury replaced your pain. It was remarkable how similar the two feelings were. You dropped his hand as if it burnt, yanking your arm back.

“Bullshit!” Your own voice was so twisted with acid sounded foreign when reached your own ears, “If you wanted to come back you’ve had thirteen years to do it! You have to have a reason. If you don’t, fucking make one up!”

Dave’s silence was longer this time than before and you almost screamed.

He looked at you for another long moment. You wondered if he was rethinking his previous statement that he liked your company, then you wondered why the idea hurt so much. You wondered why you still cared. “There is a reason. But you’re still very young. I know it doesn’t feel like it, and I know for the most part you don’t act like it, but I’m worried this is something you can’t know just yet.”

“Try me.”

“You’re not…” a flicker of something passed through his expression, too quick to discern, “I’m not going to insult you and say that you wouldn’t understand because I know you would. I just can’t tell you yet. But I will. I mean that,” His voice was quiet, “You will understand if you want to. Someday. Someday soon, I’ll explain everything to you. I promise. For now...”

Dave trailed off and you waited.

“...I will tell you that I didn’t leave. Rose kicked me out.”

You shook your head slowly, “I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Then don’t, but I’m telling the truth. You can ask her yourself.”

He was a liar and fraud and if your heart could break any further it would have. You unclipped your seat belt and climbed out of the car without another word. Before you slammed close the door, something stopped you and you turned back to him, “Merry Christmas, Dave. This will be the first year I’ll be glad you aren’t there to celebrate.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> word count: it's over 9000.
> 
> also!!! an open apology to any jane-enthusiasts!! I am sorry that i'm basically only using ur baby girl for plot. she gets like zero character development and i am so sor r y this is was a real book i woudl tyr and fix tha t

Three months later found yourself sitting next to Jake at lunch. The two of you had taken to eating your meals together in the courtyard until Roxy was okay with you eating lunch at her lunch table again. You prefer being outside, not because you liked the sunlight but because you liked seeing Jake so content. He would smile around too-big bites of food and get crumbs everywhere, slinging his sandwich around with his sweeping gestures when he told a story. Talking to Jake was always like this, fun in the same way it was to watch a puppy try to walk. Slightly embarrassing, but charmingly cute.  

He was a nice distraction from the topics your mind always wanted to dwell on: reliving the conversation you had had with your brother, or the business card that you carried in your wallet. Thinking about those things only ever served to spike your anxiety and so you tried to avoid them. You wished you could think about Dave without thinking about how he had said. You hadn't held him leaving all those years ago against him because you figured he had really great reasons, but now it just looked like he had just left for the sake of leaving, since he couldn’t give you one explanation.

Jake had once caught you staring at the minimalist design and the thin lettering of “Dave Strider” and asked you why, if the card only served to make you sad, you didn’t just throw it away. You had stared at him blankly for a full ten seconds before, “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen your eyes glued to that old thing a lot, as of late,” He had explained, voice too chipper for the way your heart was sinking, “If I was you, I would have tossed it in the wastebasket a long time ago. Add a bit more pep to your step. If you need the number why don’t you just save it to your phone and throw that ol’ card out?"

You didn’t try to explain to him that it had nothing to do with the phone number. In fact, you had no intention of ever using it. If just one conversation with Dave had thrown your life off a few degrees, you didn't want to make that worse with more. The paper was more than just a way to hold a ten numbers, it was proof that your conversation with Dave had taken place, and you couldn’t save that to a phone unless you wanted to take a picture of the card and turn it into the same kind of document that you already had at least fifty of. You didn’t need more pictures. To you, that was taking a step back.

You might have not called the number but you certainly did your other homework. The day after you had gotten home from Roxy’s party, you locked yourself in your room with you laptop, sat down at your desk, and watched nine films- all of the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, along with the lesser known films Dave had mentioned. You were still more than furious at him but, but your addiction to learning more about him had only grown. You quickly found out that SBAHJ originated as a comic and so you read all of those too, and then you read every tabloid article and newspaper column, watching every interview and every second of behind the scenes footage.

The interviews replaced the photos. You still hid the albums under your bed, but you no longer talked to them or poured over them deep into the hours of the night. You had once pulled them out and glanced at the fading image, but it felt like going back to ‘Kiddie Fun Land’ after spending a week in Disney World.

Your favorite interview was one with some man from some website you vaguely recognized the name of. He was the only interviewer that asked interesting questions (What's been your favorite interaction with a fan? Do you have a go-to stand-up comedian? Who would you want to play yourself in a movie?”) that made Dave squint his eyes a little and smile very faintly, pleased to not have the same old questions one after the other.

That was also the same interview where you found out Dave had a tattoo. Tattoo’s had come up in the conversation and the interviewer had casually asked how Dave felt about them, and he had answered “It would be exceedingly hypocritical of me if I said anything other than that I support them’.”

“Hypocritical? Do you have any?”

“Just the one. We all had our rebellious years, Garry."

Finding out the little things about him was incredible. You found out his favorite color was red and that he was left handed and the more you learned about him the more you wanted to know more.

It was a little strange- from what you had gathered from the film industry, most of the time it was the actors who did the interviews while the directors stayed behind the cameras. You figured that since Dave was handsome and rather young for his success he was getting more coverage than other directors. Yeah, that had to be it, the guy looked no older than twenty. Huh. How old was Dave again? He had to be somewhere around thirty, right? You quickly did the math. Thirty-three. Shit, no that had to be wrong.

You paused the interview that you were rewatching and leaned back in your chair. He had left when you were two, so thirteen years ago, and he had been twenty. Twenty plus thirteen, thirty- three. He was thirty- three. There was no way Dave was thirty- three. You checked the date that the interview was recorded needlessly- he looked the same in all the footage and not a day over how he looked in your photos. Fucker must age well too. Of course. His life was perfect.  

You shut down your laptop.

~~~ 

“I haven’t talked with you much recently, Dirk.” You mom mused one morning over breakfast. You looked up from your cereal and watch her for a moment before shrugging one shoulder. She was right, after all. Rose continued. “I think we are due for a little chit-chat, don’t you agree? Some quality mother to son bonding."

"Okay."

"How's school? Are you liking your classes?"

"Nice, I see you're opting to go with the classic 'mother question'. The chief thing that all mothers just have to know." You took another bite of cereal. She waited. "It's fine. Classes are fine. We're starting a project in History over the founding fathers. What about you, how's work?"

"Work's going well, thank you for asking," You didn't expect a real answer. Rose never talked about her job. "If you need help with your project don't hesitate to ask. At the very least I can sit off to the side and interject small, motherly praises. Like 'Way to go, Sweetie' or 'I'm the luckiest woman in the world, look at my wonderful son'. I've been told it's very helpful. A high asset to productivity."

You feel your mouth pull into a small, quick smile before looking back at your bowl, pushing the remaining cheerios around in the milk with your spoon. "It's actually a group project so I'm going to decline. Don't think Jake would get the joke."

She hummed, "A pity. And how is Mr. English doing? I haven't seen him around, you should have him over sometime, even if not for your History project."

"...Uhh," Jake and you had grown a little more distant and ever since Roxy party you hadn't had him over once. It was dumb, but you didn't want Roxy to hear that you and Jake were hanging out because then she might feel that you had 'moved on' from your friendship with her and that wasn't even slightly true. You were waiting for her to text you or say 'hey' to you in the halls or just to fucking look at you. Hopefully that was due any day now. She could not hold a grudge this long, I mean shit it had been three months. "Yeah, maybe."

Rose looked at her empty cup of tea sitting on the table and folded her hands in front of her. You recognized the way her eyebrows pulled slightly down to mean she was getting ready to have a Mom Moment. 

"Dirk, are you having drama in your friend group? It has been quite some time since I was a teenager but I might be able to help regardless.”

You dropped your spoon into your bowl and leaned back in your chair, looking at her flatly, “No, things are great.”

“Hm.” She looked completely unconvinced.

There was probably some way you could dodge this but what would be the point? You might as well just explain to her what was going on- it honestly wasn’t anything severe, and honestly she might be able to offer some genuine advice. You sighed heavily, like this was some huge goddamn chore, “Roxy is mad at me for something I didn’t have any control over and Jane is siding with Roxy.”

“And Jake?”

“It doesn’t feel right to hang out with him since that’s part of the reason Roxy’s mad at me in the first place. It’s all very stupid and I'm just waiting it out. I’m fine, Rose.”

“Rose? When did you start calling me Rose?” She sounded more amused than mad. You shrugged. “Have you tried apologizing?” You shrugged again. “That might be a good place to start.” ****

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Who cares? You have good friends. That's one of the most valuable things in the world. It's worth doing whatever you can to protect, regardless of if you feel justified doing it."

You press your lips together and looked at the wall before stating, “Apologizing won't help."

“I can’t imagine that you’re right.”

“But I have nothing to apologize _for_. Roxy just told me she has a crush on me and... got mad?” You still didn’t completely understand what happened. Your eyebrows pulled slightly together. What would you even say? Apologize for being physically attractive and having a good sense of humor?

Rose was quiet for a moment, taking a sip of her tea. You look back at your cereal and very carefully push the remaining four cheerios floating on top of the milk into a line the best you could.

“You could say you're sorry for how you reacted, or for not coming to her sooner to talk about it, or for hurting her feelings. Any number of things. You're a smart kid, you could think up something if you wanted to. If she stays mad at you after you've apologizes you've got a bigger problem than you think, but I doubt it's that severe. At the very least it will reopen the conversation.”

You put down your spoon, your thoughts going to Dave. He would know what to do. You wondered what he would have to say about all this. You feel your expression darken and before you have time to think it through you’re saying, “Did any bullshit like this ever happen to Dave?”

Rose freezes, her expression goes from concerned to completely flat in a matter of milliseconds. Of course, ha. You didn't know what you were expecting. The older you got the more and more Rose treated Dave's name like a cardinal sin.

“...That boy has nothing to do with you, Dirk.”

Nothing to do with you?? What a absurd thing to say, Dave had everything to do with you. What were you if you didn’t have Dave? “I’m just wondering how he dealt with people liking him, it’s an innocent question.”

“I can’t remember.”

Rose’s expression is still perfectly blank and you recognized the resemblance between Dave and Rose for not the first time. Maybe Rose saw Dave in you too. “Oh, come on, I know that's not true. I'm just trying to figure out what I should do here and I can’t talk to him, so I might as well try and get his advice through you.”

Rose’s expression didn’t change but she looked up, leaning back in her chair and taking another deep breath. “As far as I know, Dave was never in your shoes.” Her voice was quick, like she was just trying to get this out of the way. Your watched her in stunned silence- this was the first time Rose had talked to you about Dave in years, “He had quite a few friends fall for him but he dated indiscriminately and kissed more people than I want to think about. I’m unaware of a time where he didn’t reciprocate feelings.”   

Dave dated a lot of people? You looked at your hands and wondered what the slightly cold feeling in your stomach meant, “So he would probably tell me to date her.”

“He might have.” She reached over and touched your hands with her own. You looked up. Her expression was soft again, “Darling, don’t put stock in what Dave would have thought. He’s gone, and now you have me.”

The way she said it made it sound as though this was for the better. You remembered what Dave had said about Rose kicking him out and for the first time you wondered if it was true. You squashed that thought as quickly as it flashed through your mind, ignoring the sourness that followed every time you remembered that Dave would have the audacity to try and make such a claim. There was no way. Regardless, you pulled your hands away from your moms. “Can I ask you something else about Dave?”

She pursed her lips and nodded stiffly, “If we’re already talking about him, I don’t see why not. But just one question, and after this don’t mention him again. It doesn’t do to dwell on the past.”

You ignored the quick jab of dread that followed her words and asked your question, “Can you tell me why he left?”

Her expression instantly relaxed, as if she was expecting something much more difficult to answer, “Sweetie, I’ve told you this before- I don’t know why. One day he just slipped out without a word.”  

“...You didn’t kick him out, did you?” Your voice was quiet.

“Kick him out? Why would I do that?” She sounded faintly insulted and you already felt bad for even suggesting it. The idea sounded ridiculous when you said it out loud anyways.

“I don’t know.” You wanted to ask her so many more questions, but you didn’t want her to get mad, as she so often did when you talked about your brother. She seemed to be in an alright mood now but you didn’t want to push your luck, “Okay, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, and Dirk?” You had been getting up to put your bowl in the sink, but you stopped and looked at her, eyebrows raised ever so slightly in a ‘yeah what?’ sort of way. “You’re grounded.”

“What? Why??”

“You cussed. No cursing in the house, you know the rules.” She stood and kissed the top of your head, only having to bend down a little to do it, “Bring your laptop down to the kitchen by tonight. I’ll give it back to you in a week.”

You supposed that wasn’t too bad, “You know you should be happy that the only problems you’re having with your sixteen year old is sometimes he cusses. I should rob a store just to show you that I could be a lot worse. I bet I could do it. It won’t take much to mess with the crappy, old cameras they have at that gas station down the street. I checked, their equipment is at least six years outdated.”

“Ten days.” She sang, walking out of the kitchen.

“Ungrateful,” You called after her with a tiny smile, setting your dishes in the sink, “I do so much for you.”

 

~~~

The business card was getting old. You kept the thing in your wallet but you often took it out just to look at. It was a habit that picked up in frequency during the three days you were grounded from your laptop, but carefully not around Jake. He had already mentioned that he found it odd. You yourself found it odd, if you were being one hundred percent honest. Thinking about Dave always left you with a bitter taste in your mouth. Pain was a wonderful motivator, and even the most simpleminded animals learn to not repeat actions that caused them to feel it. Maybe you were an outlier.

The day after you conversation with your mom and you were staring at the simple letters spelling ‘Strider’, thinking about what Rose had said about how Dave dated ‘indiscriminately’. It was a pretty cryptic comment. Did he date whoever asked him out or did he ask out a large variety of people, or both? And even with just that did he date a large variety of girls, or did that mean he dated girls _and_ boys and everyone in between? Or maybe he dated a large variety of boys???? There was no way of knowing without asking Rose more questions and she had made that clear that that wasn’t an option. At least for a while.

But you weren’t about to ignore all her advice. You knew you needed to start hanging out with Jake again, at least. He wasn’t Roxy, but you didn’t want to lose him too.  

“Dirk!”

You looked up, already putting the card back into your wallet. You tilted your head up slightly to Jake in greeting, “Hey, man. Glad you could make it.”

He sat down next to you. “So why are we suddenly meeting at this park? I’ll admit it is a lovely park and I thank you for getting me out of the house, but do you have any exciting plans? Anything on the agenda?”

“I’m sure that if you give me a minute I can dream up something suitably invigorating for us to do. I would hate to disappoint.” You leaned forward a little to slip your wallet back into your pocket and when you looked back at Jake, and under all the surprise and excitement you caught a flicker of an expression you had seen before. "What's that thing you've always wanted me to try out, the Geo-whatever-the-fuck?"

"You wanna Geocache?" Jake smiled widely. You raise an eyebrow and shrug. 'Why the hell not?’ From what you had heard, Geocaching was some modern, suburban treasure hunt where people hid tiny containers and documented their location online for other to locate. It seemed pretty pointlessly frustrating to you but Jake was crazy about it, "Blimey this keeps getting better and better. I bet there's some in this park too, hang on..." Jake pulled his phone out and tapped the screen some. You guessed he was launching the app. Man. Must be nice to have a smartphone, but Rose couldn't afford one for you. It only bothered you when you saw Jake with his shiny, clean-looking android, knowing that he had no idea what half the features did. "I've always wanted to Geocache with other people but my grandma can't really get around much anymore and I don’t really have anyone other than you to ask, haha."

Jake didn't have many friends. And by that you meant you were basically his only friend, especially since you knew Jake and Roxy were not on speaking terms at the moment. You felt a fresh wave of guilt for separating yourself from him over the last few months. You scooted closer to him until your legs were pressed together so you could see what he was doing, and you could feel him glance up at you but you were looking at his phone screen. "Are all these green dots what we're looking for?"

"Uh, y- yeah!" He proceeded to explain to you again the logistics of what Geocaching was and you watched him carefully the entire time. You didn’t stop watching him until you parted ways hours later, and while you walked home you knew something new that you had learned from catching the way his eyes lit up when you said his name and how he stumbled over his words when you stood just a little too close.

 

**~~**

 

Your laptop was your only connection to the internet, and with it safely tucked away with Rose, you had to no way of watching Dave’s interviews or behind the scenes takes. You honestly really tried readjust to only having your photo albums, but it just wasn’t the same. It didn’t stop you from pulling the thick albums out from under your bed and looking at the images again and again, trying to appease the familiar ache that welled in your chest when you didn’t devote time to Dave.

You brushed the thin layer of dust off the familiar cover before cutting to around the middle of the book, letting the black plastic pages fall open carefully, laying on your bed on your stomach.

The bed creaked quietly when you shifted your weight to one elbow to turn the page and then again when you relaxed again. Your eyes fell on what was easily one of you favorite photographs. Dave obviously had taken himself, since the picture was his reflection in a mirror and he was holding the camera in one hand. His other hand was balancing the blond toddler sitting on his shoulders. You guessed that the both of you had been in a store of some sort based off the background and the matching, extravagant neon orange necklaces you were both wearing that still had tags. Despite the silly set up Dave’s face was perfectly expressionless.

Thinking about Dave was a lot of searching for a light switch in a room with no walls. You had no idea what you were looking for and no clue where you would find it, but you had this feeling that once you found it, and flooded everything with light, things would suddenly make sense. But right now you were just fumbling around in the dark, reaching out into a vast, empty room and finding just more and more emptiness, like something should be there that isn't, like maybe someone had taken an ice cream scoop and scrapped out a chunk of your emotions. There should _be something_ that was missing. Was the emptiness you felt resentment or longing or were you just incomplete? Did Dave ever feel it too?  

Your eyes swept over the photos as you fed the demon that twisted painfully in your chest. Maybe someday all your nerves would go numb and you wouldn't feel anything anymore. Wouldn't that be incredible.

A quiet sigh passes your lips as your eyes skimmed over the motionless, lifeless images. Dammit. You wanted to hear his voice. You wanted to hear him talk about his friends, or himself, or the world or his favorite book or fuck, anything. You would have happily listened to him read a phone book and felt like the luckiest kid in the world. A tiny flicker of something gentle brushed over you when you remembered what his voice had sounded like in his car, the only time you had heard him speak without the interference of a microphone. His words had flowed like water, relaxed and confident. And he had talked so freely (a huge contrast to how carefully he conducted himself in interviews).

Which of course reminded you of _what_ that soothing voice had said, and then you were dwelling on the fact that he had said he hadn't wanted to leave. What a load of shit. You almost didn't register the throb of hurt in your gut. After all, you felt it almost constantly as of recently. Haha. Ha. It was so great to be you. You let out a low, frustrated moan and rolled over onto your back, staring at the ceiling of your room. Fuck Dave. He didn't deserve you torturing yourself over him. He wasn't worth it. All he ever did was rip your heart out and pour acid in the chambers, both when he was with you and when he wasn't. Sure, he gave you comfort sometimes but from what? Comfort from the misery he was inflicting on you all the other times?

Fuck. Fucking. Dave.

You rolled these words around in your head over and over, until you pulled out your wallet and freeing the white business card kept inside. You run your thumb down the edge of the paper.

Then you pulled out your phone.

What were you doing. What the hell were you doing. You didn't even know if you wanted to yell at him or if you wanted to beg him to come home.

The phone picked up on the third ring.

"Hello, you've reached the desk of Mary Easton, how can I help you?"

"I want to talk to Dave."

"I'm so sorry, I'm afraid you'll have to talk to me instead," Her voice sounded slightly annoyed, you guessed because you had the obvious voice of a teenager and she probably thought this was a prank call, "As his agent anything you tell me will be passed to him if it is deemed necessary. May I ask who is speaking?"

"I'm his brother, my name is Dirk Strider."

There was a pause on the other end. You almost hoped she wouldn't put you through. You had no idea what you would say to him if he picked up, holy shit, you were calling Dave what the _hell were you doing_.

"...I'll put you through right away, sir, please stay on the line."She sounded stunned.You didn't have the capacity or time to think about what that could mean while the phone rang before there was a click and-

"Hello?"

Your knees pulled up towards your chest and you held the phone with both hands like it was something precious.

"...Hi."

"Who is this?" Why yes, I would like to purchases one ticket for the Emotional Roller Coaster thank you. His voice washed over you like stepping into the sunshine. It was surreal how quickly it filled your chest with warmth and you suddenly knew why you called him. "...If this sounds crazy and I'm jumping to conclusions please stop me before I get my hopes higher than they already are but I've told Mary to only connect one person to this number."

Don't say anything. Don't ruin this.

"So... Dirk?" You squeeze your eyes closed."Is this... am I speaking to you?" If you say 'yes' you knew what came after- empty apologies- and that would eliminate the entire purpose of calling him. "I can hear breathing, I know someone's there. And that 'Hi' sounded a lot like..." You hear a quiet puff of air and then Dave says "Ok look, I'm just being polite, I know this is you. You're the only person Mary would connect me with."

You tried to memorize what this felt like. Tried to wrap the slightly giddy feeling of comfort around Dave's name so next time you thought of his you would remember this moment. Only this moment, not the one where you left his car, boiling with the idea that Dave couldn't even spare you common decency to talk to you like you weren't just an idiot that he could convince to believe anything he wanted.

You needed a good memory to override the bad one. Just one good memory. Your world was too cold when you felt mad at him or resent him. This could be your good memory.

It would be perfect if he just kept talking. You wanted to prompt him but didn't trust yourself to not say something dumb (like 'I need you so much, please come home please please please please god please') and taint the moment. But you weren't ready to hang up, and if you didn't say _anything_  he would most certainly hang up soon. But...

...maybe you could just talk about something safe.

"My favorite color is red."

"What?"

"My favorite color is red. I don't have a favorite food but I really like ice cream, and I do robotics sometimes so I guess that's a hobby."

A pause before, "Those the real answers to the questions I asked you before?"

"Yeah."

"You remembered them after what, three months?" He sounded faintly amused, but it was a given in your perspective: how could you forget anything he ever said? "Red is a great color. It’s actually my favorite too." Yeah, no shit. Come on, Dave, why do _you_  think you like red? “And you should teach me how to do that robo thing, it sounds rad. But you’ll have to exercise extreme patience with me, I haven’t touched a circuit board since high school.”

You chew on your lip thinking about the invitation and knowing there was no way you would ever be able to bring yourself to take him up on it. "I also took the Which Disney Princess Are You quiz off of Buzzfeed."

You heard a quiet sound that you thought could be a laugh, "Jesus kid. Alright I'll bite, who'd you get?"

"Pocahontas."

"Incredible. I took it too. Got Jasmine, which is really awesome since Aladdin's always been my favorite Disney movie. I like the genie.” His voice floated from your phone and filled the room with life. You took a deep breath. You needed to ingrain this moment in your goddamn mind so that you could replay it back again and again.

And then once you hang up you wouldn’t call him again. Never give him the chance to soil his own name. You felt something awful and hot lodge itself in your throat at the idea but it was even more upsetting to consider the alternative.

When you didn’t respond he kept talking, a little bit more careful than before, “But you didn’t call to hear me talk about Disney movies.”

You shook your head no, fully aware that he couldn't see you, “I did not, but it’s… it’s ok. It’s nice.”

He fell quiet again and you pulled your knees tighter to your chest.When he spoke again his voice was soft. “Why did you call me then?”

Would it be weird to tell him the truth? To say that you just had to hear his voice saying something to you that didn’t hurt? Yeah, no. There was no way you were saying that. This had to be the Good Conversation.

“Just… wanted to talk,” you mumble, aware of how dumb you sounded, “Rose pays for a certain number of minutes for this phone every month and I almost never call anyone. It just. Seemed like a waste, so I thought I might as well find out if the number you gave me would actually put me through to you.”

“Yeah, of course. I told Mary that you might call and that if you did to direct the call to my phone.”

“Why couldn’t you have just given me your cell number?”

“Yeah, like Rose wouldn't notice that. This way the number that shows up in your call logs is the one for the agency, not mine. If Rose asks you can just say you had to call a local agent for a school project and Mary has already agreed to not tell anyone you’ve called although she doesn’t really know why.”

You didn’t even really know why. You tried to divert the conversation to a safer topic. “She seems nice.”

“Who, Mary? Yeah, she’s a real bro.”

“You should tell me about her.”

“Umm? She’s really great at what she does and she keeps me away from most of the bullshit parties that I would typically need to go to. Ten out of ten stars."

Your eyes fell to the photo album.

"Dave?" You were sure you imagined the way his breath caught, "Do you know that Rose has these family photo albums?"

"I have a vague memory of something like that, yes. It's not hard to believe though. Rose really was into doing all these cliche family things just because they were cliches. Somewhere there's a picture of all of us in matching outfits. Like the awful blue cotton shirts and blue jeans, and we went to the mall to get the pictures professionally done so its in front of a shitty green-screen field of flowers."

He was rambling. You gave a quiet snort of amusement, "I haven't come across that yet."

"I can't imagine that Rose would have kept it either, so don't waste time looking."

You were totally going to waste time looking. "I wont. Look, there's a picture in one of the albums that I really like and I want to know of you remember it."

"Ooh. A pop quiz. Ok, go."

"We're wearing these matching orange necklaces that are tacky as hell."

"How old are you?"

"Uh, probably around a year and a half? It looks like it was taken in a mirror."

"That's 'cause it was."

You felt your eyebrows rise, “Oh?”

Dave sounded decidedly smug, "Rose was shopping for something and dragged us along so I fucked around in the accessories and they had those mirrors everywhere so you could check out your reflection wearing their products. We didn't actually buy them, which was pretty rude of us considered that you had smeared your slobbery, disgusting baby hands all over yours."

You laugh quietly. Dave makes a dramatic gasp.

“So you can laugh!”

You roll your eyes, still smiling, “Yes. Shut up. Of course I can.”

“I am physically unable to shut up. Especially after such an important discovery. I’m calling the news station right now, this is headliner shit. I can see it now, ‘Elusive Teen Displays Positive Emotion’ subtitle ‘When Will He Chill With his Brother, Experts are Asking’."

You couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“I am the experts here, by the way. I am asking. That’s my question. Wanna meet up sometime?”

Ok he wasn’t joking.

The phone beeped when you hit ‘end call’.  

**~~**

 

"One more time, why the hell did you pick Rainbow Road?" Jake had not stopped whining since you had selected the track, "I'll be lucky to start my second lap before this blasted game cuts me off," You snorted. "Oh, can it. I would be doing better if I practiced more. You probably play this all the time."

"I literally only play Mario Cart when you come over. Look, I'm not doing that much better than you."

"Wh- you're in fifth place!!" 

"Okay I'm doing a lot better than you. But the point is," you stop talking for a second while you aim a banana at Wario, "I don't have an unfair advantage. You actually have more an a leg up than I do, you're almost a licensed driver."

Jake elbowed you in the ribs, causing himself to fall off the track, "Oh fucking.... this is nothing like real driving."

You spared him a short, amused glance, "The fact that you know that just goes to support my point. Rose has literally never let me behind the wheel."

"Talking about me?"  You paused the game, looking up to see Rose standing in the entry of the living room. She was watching the T.V. "Jake, you should get Dirk to put in a game you're both good at."

You said "Don't worry mom, he's bad at all games," while Jake said "You know that's a great idea, can- hey!"  You snickered while Jake glared at you. He addressed your mom, "How did you know it wasn't Dirk that was losing?"

Rose nodded at the screen, "My choices were Princess Peach and Toad. Like Dirk wouldn't be Princess Peach." Jake looked back at you and rolled his eyes but you could see his smile.

"So what's up, Mom? You just stopping by to watch us play some Mario or are you gonna give me back that laptop in your hands?"

Rose smiled at you warmly and sets the laptop down on on the end table. The game was paused and you were already scrambling to your feet by the time she said "It's all yours".

"Sweet.”

Rose patted your cheek and you made a face, ducking away from her hand. You watched her leave. Once she was around the corner you grabbed the computer and flopped down onto the couch, booting it up.

"Jake, you ever heard of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff?"

“Aren’t those the movies your brother made?” You look up at him and wet your lips, suddenly slightly nervous. It was always weird having Jake talk about your brother. You hadn't even really meant to tell him, it just spilled out one day. He was the only one of your friends who even knew you had a brother. He was the only person outside of you family that knew. You were just grateful that Jake was a black hole of pop culture and didn't seem to care that Dave Strider was worth more than the northern hemisphere. 

“Yeah. Yeah, they are." You quickly logged on and made a google search. You didn't planning on watching SBAHJ with Jake but you also didn't expect Rose would give you your laptop back while Jake was over. You had been anxious to watch Dave’s interviews again but. Now while Jake was here. Watching Dave’s movies was a good alternate until Jake left, “Wanna watch them with me?"

Jake looked slightly hesitant. You waited.

"Uh, sure, but what about the game?"

You looked back at your computer to queue up your favorite installment but the window popped up with an error message. "You can turn off the T.V if you want, I'll shut the wii down later."

There was a bit of noise as Jake found the remote and turned off the television before sitting down next to you, looking at your screen.

"What's with all the pop-up ads? Do you have a virus?"

"They're not ads they're error messages." You killed the tab you were in a refreshed your connection to the wifi. "I'm finding the video, hang on."

"What do you mean find one?" Realization made Jake punch your arm only half playfully, "Bootlegging movies is illegal, Dirk! You should buy the films that you like."

"Call the police then," you were only half paying attention to him, watching the screen of your computer with slowly growing anxiety. You were getting the same error message again and again. The videos weren't taken down, they were blocked.

As soon as the thought crossed your mind your hands stilled.

"...Dirk?"

You ignored him. You opened a new tab and typed 'Dave Strider' into the search bar.

Blocked.

Fuck.

"We don't have to watch the movie if you can't find it."

This had never happened before Rose took your laptop. She must have done this, but why would she block you from googling about Dave? What was she scared you would find? You felt a wave an anger. He was _your brother_ she couldn't block him from you he was _yours_ , you had a literal birthright to know about him.

"Cripes, don't be angry, chap." Jake's voice was flooded with confusion and worry. You took a deep breath and closed the screen of your laptop. You were fine, Dirk, breathe. So Rose put up a few blocks on your laptop. You could probably take a look at the programming and revert everything back to normal. And if for whatever reason you couldn’t, you could always use school computers or borrow someone's smartphone. Ok, Rose was putting her foot down about Dave, but it wasn't like Rose could delete files off the entire internet, like she was throwing away- oh shit shit shitshitshitshit.

You shoved your laptop off your lap and bolted to your room, ignoring Jake calling after you. Moments later you were dropping to your stomach next to your bed, looking under the mattress.

The albums were gone.

Your throat closed and you had to bite your tongue to fight off the heat pricking at your eyes, pushing yourself up slowly to sit on the floor, leaning back against your bed. Stupid, stupid. You should have actually tried to hide them. You had known Rose knew they were there, but you didn’t think she would actually take them away from you, fuck, they were just _pictures_. You had already had the real Dave ripped away from you, couldn’t you keep his _pictures_? What was next, was she going to make you move away from where he lived? Start denying that he ever existed at all like some fucked up psychological experiment?

You felt something worse than resentment towards your mom clawing its way to the surface. Dave had never been as intangible as he was right now. Both feelings terrified you.

“Dirk, what the bloody fuck is wrong?!” The door to your room slammed open and there was Jake, his face contorted with worry, “Are you on drugs? Do I need to call your… are you crying?!?”

Were you? You raised a hand to your eyes and woah. You hadn’t cried in years. You opened your mouth to respond but you couldn’t speak. Even if you could what would you say? ‘Sorry, haha, I have a fucked up addiction to looking at photos and watching interviews of my brother and pretending he’s here with me, and my mom saw my internet search history and became worried and now is taking away everything I have that lets me feel close to him hahaha _Moms_. So wanna come over again tomorrow?’

You didn’t even notice that Jake was sitting down next to you until he was wrapping an arm around your shoulders. You leaned into him because he was there, and because he was offering. “I am still awfully confused but I don’t have to know what’s going on to try and help so,” He awkwardly kind of pats your arm, “...there, there." It sounded so forced that you might have laughed if you weren't on the verge of a breakdown, "Hey, at least now you can tell Roxy you’re not emotionally constipated! Ah hahah. That’s not funny at all. I’m sorry. I’m bad at this.”

“I can tell.” Your voice was flat and tense. He gave a thin laugh.

“Do you... want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

A few seconds passed before you trusted yourself to not slip into a panic, letting an easy lie roll off your tongue, “That laptop was my dads. My mom gave it to me a few years ago and it’s the only thing I have of his other than these photo albums that I keep under my bed or-” You were pulling this out of your ass but it was close enough to the truth that your next breath was shaky, “ _used_  to keep under my bed. I had brought them with me to school for a project and never brought them back. It’s really nothing big, I just- they’re important,” you pulled at the tiny hairs on the back of your hand, your voice hushed, “They’re really important to me.”

“And the laptop reminded you that you didn’t have them?”

You nodded and pressed the palms of your hands against your eyelids. You didn’t fucking have them. Those pictures were the only material items you owned that you cared about and Rose had taken them away. You knew she had taken them for good too, she would never do something half-assed. You imagined Dave’s face and tried to burn the image into your brain. Who knew when you were going to be able to see an image of him again? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuCK.

“...I understand, I never knew my dad either. If I had something of his I would freak out if I thought I had lost it too.”

You honestly didn’t give a shit about your dad. Rose talked about him less than she talked about Dave and she never talked about Dave. You sniffed quietly and looked up at Jake quickly, “Yeah. Thanks for understanding, Jake. You're a good friend.”

You were close enough to Jake that you heard his breath catch.

Huh.

You suddenly had a tiny flicker of hope. If you couldn't find solace with the thought of Dave in ways you had in the past but maybe you could feel close to him by doing things he would have done. Walking in his footsteps as much as you could.

You lifted your eyes up to his again and this time you didn’t look down. Unless you count glancing to his lips as looking down.

Did you feel romantically attracted to Jake? No. Not even slightly. Sure, he was a good friend but he was more than a little bit overbearing.

But it hardly mattered your lungs were slowly constricting tighter and tighter at the thought that there was nothing you had to connect you to Dave except for a tiny, faded business card. A business card and the boy sitting next to you, because if Dave kissed a lot of people then fuck if you weren’t going to as well.

 

~~~

“Dirk?"

“Hey Roxy.”

The silence stretched for what felt like years. When Roxy spoke again her words were hurried.

“Oh my god, Dirk, I'm so dumb I’m so sorry I honestly-”

“No I’m sorry, you’re my best friend and we should have worked this out sooner.”

“Why are _you_ apologizing?” Roxy’s voice, even over the shitty speakers of your phone, sounded like home. God, you had missed her, “I shouldn’t have been mad over something so juvenile, like, wow, I would way rather be your friend with no bullshit drama on the side than force some temporary romance or whatever with you.”

“Thank god, me too.”

“Besides, you’re younger than me. I don’t want to be known as a cougar.”

You stop pacing and look up from the business card you were holding in your free hand to stare at the wall, “...I think the age gap has to be more than a few months before you’re deemed a ‘cougar’. But what’s wrong with being a cougar? Those women are headstrong and confident. Have you ever even watched Cougar Town, they have an excellent community.” Roxy laughed. You don’t smile. “I’m honestly so happy to hear you say that though. About not wanting to date me.”

“Heh, me too. You would make a terrible boyfriend.”

“Wow. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Babe.”

“Can um,” You pushed a little timidness into your voice, “Can Jake and I sit with you at lunch again? Our seats haven’t been taken by all of your and Jane’s suitors, have they?”

“The seats at our table are waiting for your asses, Dirk. They have been assless for months.”

“Wait, really? The guys aren’t lined up around the block for a chance to mac on either of you?”

“Surprising, I know. Understandable for me, but Jane is an uncharted gold mine of ‘woah hot momma, damn’.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

You kept talking to Roxy for another fifteen minutes or so.

When you hang up you instantly dialed a new number. The phone picked up on the first ring.

“Dirk! It’s been so long!”

“Don't I know. I wanted to check in on you, it feels like we haven’t talked in decades.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

“So how have you been?”

“I’m doing wonderful now that I’ve heard your voice again! I was a little worried I never would. But what about you, how are,” Jane hesitated and you could almost see her pressing her lips together in worry. Her next words were slow and hesitant, “How are things with Roxy?”

“We actually just worked everything out a bit ago. The whole thing had kind of dissolved into a grudge match so we just brushed it aside.”

“Really?! I’m so glad to hear it! Yeah, Roxy got over everything a while ago but she’s been so worried that you weren’t going to forgive her and that things couldn’t go back to how they were that she’s been avoiding you for weeks, haha.” Huh. “Other than that fiasco, how have you been?”

“Uh, actually.” You took a deep breath and sat down at your desk, setting the card down carefully before idly picking up a pen a twirling it between your fingers, “Not so good.”

Jane was quiet for a few moments. “Are you okay?”

“Physically, yes.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

You swallowed, waiting a beat, “I kissed Jake.”

You watched your hand move, wondering what Rose was going to make for dinner while Jane was dealing with whatever she was dealing with on the other end that was making her silent. “He didn’t seem mad, did he?”

“No he seemed… very pleased.”

“That… that sounds like a good thing to me. I don’t understand how this is that part of the reason you’re not okay.”

“I don’t think I have feelings for Jake.”

“Ahhh there we go.” Her voice was full of sympathy, "If you don't have feelings for him, why did you kiss him?" ****

"Heat of the moment? I don't know. I've known he's liked me for a while and I guess I just felt sorry for him." ****

“This. Sounds like a serious problem. I didn't even know you guys were gay." ****

You stopped twirling your pen. Gay? Who said anything about- okay, dumb question, of course anyone would have assumed as much. But you weren't gay. Probably. You had never sat down and evaluated your sexuality but you were... you were too busy to think about this right now. "I'm not gay," You resumed sending your pen spinning between your fingers, "Can't speak for Mr. English though. I feel awful, I don't want him to get his hopes up."

"Oooh boy. Dirk, I think it might be a little late for that. Have you talked to him about it yet?”

“No.” He had blinked a lot and then laughed a little and then he said he was going to go home, talking about how he hoped you found your pictures and how he was going to talk to you later (“Okay? Keep your phone close, I’ll text you when I get home. Thanks for having me over I- I had a lot of fun. Haha...  I mean! Other than the part where you cried! That was- I mean, I don’t like seeing your cry because I c- ahem. Right. I’ll text you. Uh, Yeah. Okay. Ciao. I lllllllllook forward to… texting you.”) “Honestly, he left directly afterwards. But I needed to talk to someone about it. Or like, I needed to talk to you.”

“Why me?”

“Because I don’t like Jake, I like you.”

“Holy crap, what? I… I don’t know what to say this is so unexpected. I-” You stopped your hand for a moment and listened very carefully to her words, gauging her reaction, “Wow, right when you think you know someone!”

Flustered. Perfect.

“Ha, yeah I know this is kind of unexpected. I've liked you for a while, but I usually just push my feelings down on every subject, and I figured why should this one be different, you know? But I see how Jake not being upfront about his feelings for me has landed us in this mess and I don't want up to have that same drama,” You set down your pen and put Jane on speaker, checking your messages, “But I respect you and trust you enough to be honest. I think you deserve that.”

 

\-- golgathasTerror [TT] began bothering tiameusTestified [TT] at 18:13 --

GT: Phew! just got home!

GT: Quite the hike from your house to mine and i do think it is all uphill.

GT: It will be a very nice change of pace when i can drive us around places instead of walking everywhere.

TT: Hang on, Jane just called me. She’s acting really strange.

TT: I think... she's trying to say that she has a thing for me.

TT: But I really can’t be sure.

You tune back into what Jane was saying, “...in the grade has their eye on you! I mean, I would have to be blind to say you weren’t an attractive young man but I just can’t do that to Roxy! She would be so upset if she found out that we were dating.”

“If she can’t be happy for you what kind of friend is she?”

 

GT: Oh.

GT: Well hmm.

GT: Why are you telling me this?

“...Do you think she would understand?"

TT: I’ll feel like the world’s biggest asshole if I just turn her down.

TT: And I can’t say yes.

TT: For obvious reasons.

TT: God, why is this happening to me, shit. What should I do?

TT: I mean, she hasn’t outright asked me out or anything yet. Maybe she never will.

“I think I’ve lost all rights to claiming I understand what goes on in Roxy’s mind. We might want to wait to tell her, just to make sure she doesn’t take it poorly.”

 

GT: … I guess i don’t see why you can’t just let her flirt.

GT: Honestly who can blame her?

TT: Evidently not you.

TT: <3

“So you wanna be unofficial?”

“If you’re okay with that. We can just see how it goes.”

“And what about Jake??”

“Ugh, I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’ll understand. I mean we just kissed, we’re not dating.”

“Thank goodness, think how much more complicated that would have made everything.”

GT: <3

 ****  
~~~  
  
You made a system that worked. You took Jane out on Saturdays and Jake out Friday's after school. You started sitting with Jane and Roxy again at lunch so you didn't have to pick if which of them you ate with. Lunch was the only time you were around them both at the same time and It didn't pose any problems since you told them both that pda made you uncomfortable, and they both were under the impression that the other's casual flirting was just them nursing a hopeless crush. 

You hadn't really felt anything different when you kissed Jake and you were hoping that when you finally got around to kissing someone else you would be taken by some whimsical force and your heart would open and you would finally feel what you were looking for. It took three dates before you felt that Jane was ready to kiss you and when you finally did you were more than confused. No whimsical force. No sky-opening epiphany. It surpassed frustrating. Wasn't kissing supposed to be some Big Thing?? Something that made people's toes curl and filled them with emotions? You thought that kissing Jake didn't give you that feeling because he was a boy, but you were more into kissing Jake than you were kissing Jane, and kissing Jane didn't do you shit. You decided that the reason was because the entire point of the exercise was to feel closer to Dave and since Jake was a male he reminded you more of Dave, although that didn't make much sense to you either, seeing as you were kissing people to felt what Dave felt, not to pretend that they _were_ Dave.

Two months passed. Both of their flirting died down during lunch but they both were more insistent about 'going public'. Jake especially. Jane was still slightly worried about Roxy being upset. You usually shut down those conversations by muttering comforting words. With Jake the comforting words were usually accompanied with softly kissing his neck until he was no longer interested in talking about anything. Which was usually followed by not so softly kissing his neck, which was always followed with your hands up his shirt and his hands in your hair and him quietly gasping out tiny, embarrassing sounds that you could never imagine making yourself. 

Maybe it was because Jake had a crush on you before you kissed him, or maybe it was because Jake simply had a large libido than Jane, but things went much faster with him. While you were still planting short, sweet kisses to Jane's lips on Saturdays, Friday nights with Jake quickly changed from nervous pecks to hesitantly longer ones to happily exploring each others tongues. Jake had been eager because he was in love. You had been eager because with every new thing you tried you imagined that you were able to feel more like Dave. You were convinced that could feel closer to him through experiencing things he had experienced. It might have been working some, but the more time passed and the more your memories of Dave blurred, the more desperate you got. You started pulling Jake into empty restrooms in the middle of school. He probably found courage in your enthusiasm because he started to kiss you more confidently as well. 

You quickly found out that you liked it when Jake was confident kissing you, although maybe 'confident' wasn't the best word for it. Less shy? He started slightly leaning towards someone that actually knew what he was doing and not as... well. _Jake_. You didn't claim to be any less of a novice than Jake, but you were a much faster learner. Not only that but you had the added benefit of years of completely unfiltered media through the internet which was a far cry from what Jake could claim, being raised by a grandmother who found Discovery Channel sometimes needlessly provocative and inappropriate. As soon as the guy discovered that he had hands he quickly realized he could run them over your arms and your neck and back which was an improvement in itself. The first time that Jake's tentative hands finally found your ass was the first time you were the one to make an embarrassing sound. It was really just the tiniest strangled gasp, so soft to almost didn't reach your ears but it might as well have been a firework the way that Jake froze. You froze as well, feeling heat slowly crawl it's way to your face.

The hand on your ass slowly moved up to the small of you back pushing up your shirt and running too-warm fingers over your skin and you relaxed slightly. You opened your mouth to say something along the lines of 'now you know how dumb you sound all the time' before Jake dropped his hand back down and squeezed like he was some highly qualified ass-masseur and it was ridiculous and demeaning and there was no reason it should feel as good as it did. You were still getting over your embarrassment at having made the tiny noise from before which was why you knew God hated you when the words you had been trying to form got jumbled on their way out your mouth and you ended out just saying, "Now you kn _nnnhg_."

 You eyes squeezed closed and you let your forehead fall onto Jake's shoulder in embarrassment. Jake seemed to take the whole thing as singing encouragement. Despite the fact that your later actions were due to an inability to look Jake in the eyes it might as well have been, considering that you had never fucking moaned like that ever in your life.

You kept your eyes closed and your head on Jake's shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist and his free hand moved slowly up and down your side under your shirt. He didn't move his other hand, just let it feel you up over your jeans as he started planting sweet kisses at the junction between your neck and shoulder. Your mind was desperately trying to keep up with your body but all you could think about was 'is it normal to be turned on by this? Aren't ass-grabs mostly more the ass-grabber and for the... ass-owner?' Then Jake's fingernails scratched from mid ribs to your hips and you decided you didn't care, hips jutting forward on their own volition as a soft word, too quiet to reach even your own ear rolled off your tongue, nothing more than a breath.

" _Dave_."

The moment you realized what you've said your eyes flashed open and you felt like you just jumped into freezing water. You pushed Jake off you with more than a little vehemence. He stumbled back, blinking wide eyed like a child.

"What did I do?" Was the first words to spill out of his mouth, a little breathless and rushed. Your face was blank as you took a few deep breaths through your nose. He didn't know what was wrong. Did he not hear you? You guessed you had just kind of whispered it but it had been whispered pretty close to his ear. More importantly why the fuck did you say it in the first place, for once you hadn't had even been thinking about Dave! As you fished for and answer you turned away from Jake and fixed your shirt.

"You didn't do anything wrong." Jesus, you were still fighting off embarrassment and now you had fo deal with being confused and annoyed too. You didn't enjoy emotions, and hoped they were fall away quickly, as your emotions tended to do, "I'm going home."

You had only made it five steps before Jake stopped you, running up beside you and clasping a hand on your shoulder to get you to stand still. You looked at him. Jake seemed to not know what to say for a few seconds, like he just ran over to stop you without any real reason.

"May we take some time to discuss what's going on right now before you leave? Because I feeling rather discombobulated and I would like to know what I did wrong so I can not repeat it."

"I already said you didn't do anything but if you want I can say it again with more conviction, if that will make you feel better."

"Well then why are you suddenly running off?"

You looked at the door to Jake's bedroom door wishing you could just walk through it and go. No, it was more than that, you wished you didn't have to do _any_  of this, all this running around between Jake and Jane and searching for _something_ that you didn't even know _existed._ God you just _wanted Dave back_.

"Because I'm done." You said after a short pause, looking back at Jake, "I don't want to do this anymore."

You watched as Jake let that sink in. "What? You're breaking up with me because I touched your butt?"

That gets you to push an amused puff of air out of your nose in a subdued laugh, kind of tilt your head and squint your eyes in mock confusion, because honestly Jake was so dumb. The kid was completely irrelevant to your decision, this was one hundred percent a product of your own personal realization that couldn't have been more separate from Jake if he had never talked to you in your life.

"Break up with you? Jake, we aren't dating."

It was honestly pathetic how easy Jake was to read his expressions flashed across his face like he was writing them there in neon ink. "What?"

You humor him, "We aren't dating. I thought you knew this, when I have I ever said we were?"

He must have been going through some tough shit because all he said was another "...What."

"I wanted to know what it was like to makeout with people and why would I waste time wooing someone when you already liked me. It was honestly just the logical thing for me to do."

Jake's stepped backwards and put his hands up as if to calm you down, " _What??_ "

"Okay friendly advice stop saying 'what'- it makes you sound as dumb as you look."

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" His voice was thick with something gross and your urge to leave was stronger than ever, "You can't actually be serious, no one is this heartless."

You narrow your eyes at him. You had a heart. It just didn't belong to Jake.

"See you at school, man." You left, pulling your phone out as you did. Jane wasn't online so you left her a few messages.

 

\--timaeusTestified [TT] began bothering gutsyGumshoe [GG]--

TT: Hey. Text me when you can.

TT: We need to talk.

TT: Hint- I picked that cliche intentionally.

\--timaeusTestified [TT] ceased bothering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

 

That should do it.  

  
  
  
You knew Jane got your message because later that evening Roxy showed up at your doorstep and greeted you with a slap to the face that had you seeing stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am never going to pick a title for this. don't even remember the title. might as well not even look at it. it will probably change tomorrow. i might as well jsut call it fuckin 'untitled' because that is what it is it.  
> In other news this probably wont be updated for a few weeks. I'm thinking like maybe three? I'm eager to write it but I just started a new semester and also I am moving! So.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk is not a lightweight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m still a little shocked that people are actually like. reading my bullshit?? I don't usually let anyone read my writing and i flip out every time i think that 300 people have read this. why are you here. 
> 
> my excuse for not updating in 10 year: college apps and AP classes. they are a bitch.

"I’ll give you one minute to explain yourself before I’m inverting your organs.”

You could still feel the warm tingle on your cheek that was quickly starting to sting and you stare at the floor, mouth slightly open in stunned silence.

“...Excuse me?”

“Dirk Strider, I just got off the phone with Jane and she had a _very_ interesting story for me regarding you and these last couple 'a weeks, and by the time I hung up I about sixty text messages from Jake saying he had no one else to go and that you had just shit all over his emotions. You're lucky I didn't charge in here with a gun, so Imma ask you one more time. What. Did you do."

You ignored her and took a few steps backwards into your house and looked into the mirror that was hung on the wall so Rose could check her reflection before heading out. Your cheek was red and slightly blotchy in the vague shape of a hand and you would be lying if you said you weren’t impressed. You poked the red with two fingers and watched as the pale skin was replaced with flush the second your fingers pulled back.

“I can’t believe you slapped me.” You were more awed than upset, “I did not see that coming.”

“You’re dodging my question, Strider.”

You really weren’t, you were genuinely just more interested in examining your injury than you were in talking to Roxy about Jane and Jake. Besides, you already knew that she wasn’t going to leave here with a greater understanding of ‘why you did what you did’. You knew this mainly because you barely understood why you did what you did yourself, and the small portion that you did understand (that you had started the whole thing in as half panicked shot-in-the-dark to feel a connection with your brother and you stopped because it wasn't working) was information that would die when you did. You poked the skin again.

“Ow. Did you know that that was my first time being slapped?” When you looked back at Roxy she had followed you into your house. She looked down at her hand and shook it out a little. You caught a glimpse of pride flicker across her face before she rounded on you again.

“You should be glad, I can’t think or a better situation than this to pop that cherry. Your first slap was _weeell_ deserved and a long time coming. But don’t let me distract you, your minute is quickly running out. Better talk quick, asshole, chop chop.”

Fine, damn. “I decided that I wanted to experience kissing someone and so I politely proposed the idea to them and they both seemed down. There was never any commitment, and both knew that but I guess just choose to ignore it, which you can’t blame me for,” Roxy’s face was unreadable as she listened, “I don’t know why you’re all taking this so hard, it wasn’t some big thing. I never was in a relationship with either of them. We mostly just went to the park or hung out and watched T.V.  Perfectly harmless.”

“Just because _you_ weren’t emotionally involved doesn’t mean they weren’t as well. In their eyes those were dates. Who would assume that you weren’t interested in them unless you _explained_ all that to them upfront?”

“...But if I did they never would have agreed.”

Roxy threw her hands up in exasperation, “Yes, Dirk, they wouldn’t have agreed! Exactly! You knew they wouldn’t be okay with it if they _understood_ what they were getting themselves into, so why would you trick them into doing it!?”

You shrug one shoulder, feeling yourself close up a little from the harshness in her voice, “Wanted to see if I could.”

“Hm. No, I think you knew that already. You don’t try anything unless you’re confident you can do it well. Do you want to know why I think you decided to scam your two best friends into having romantic feelings for you and then break their hearts?”

“Not really.” Your voice is quiet.

“Too bad, you signed that dotted line when you decided to pull this shit. Your ass is so completely legally obligated to listen to me laying things out for you, complying to the regulations laid out in the 'Friendship Handbook' under article 'You Fucked Up'. So what I think,” Roxy stepped toward you and you instinctively leaned back, feeling yourself tense as if she was preparing to attack you with her fists as well as her words. "Is that you did this because you are desperate to feel something more than apathy. I have never met or heard of someone as cold as you are, and if I was you, if I was able to look at my two closest friends and think 'Oh, It’s okay to want to break their hearts,' I would be pretty fuckin eager to experience emotions too. And not like, oh hey, the cafeteria is serving ice cream today, score, I'm happy about this. Real emotions. The kind of emotions that make you feel like that little metronome in your chest pumps something more valuable than blood." She took a deep breath and exhaled it in a breathy, humorless laugh, "And, fuck, Dirk, that's not a bad thing to want! But there has got to be a better way to get it. You can't treat the people that love you like they're lab rats, captured in a little cage to help you perform experiments. You just... you can't.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

You thought she would be happy with your response, not look at you with something akin to pity, “Ya’ know, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. I can’t be your conscience, you're supposed to just _know_ these things,” She shook her head, “You know I love you, and I'm saying this because you need to hear it, but you have something terrible and cold where your soul is supposed to be. And honestly whatever it is it's pretty fuckin' evil."

You stared at her while you let her words sink in. You very rarely saw Roxy speaking honestly and seriously and the way she was looking at you at you reminded you of your mother in a way that was setting you on edge.  "I was right. I didn't want to hear that."

It was her turn to shrug, "Sorry. Tough shit."

You knew that you should be overflowing with hurt or anger or fuck, anything. But it was like your heart had closed up shop for the day, leaving nothing but a functional set of skin and bones. You look at the floor to avoid meeting her eyes, speaking flat and very slowly. Emotionless, but. “I can see where you’re coming from. I have a little more originality in the way I experience the world or whatever. But that doesn’t mean I’m broken or the devil incarnate, that just... me.” Your voice fell lamely on the last word. Roxy was already shaking her head in disagreement, her lips pressed together. When she spoke again her voice was tight.

“I don’t think you’re the devil, geeze, Dirk. And I don’t think you’re broken either, but mostly because that implies you were at some point _not_ like this. Maybe incomplete is a better word. Like even right now, I just said some pretty heavy shit! You should be mad at me or at least annoyed but you just look bored.”

You stared at her for a long moment. Shit, you weren’t bored, you were hollow. Her words were reverberating around in an empty skull instead of driving knives into your heart, but you weren’t sure how long you could stay this way, how long it would take for your shield to crack and the acid of her words to spill through. More than anything, you didn’t want that to happen, but the longer she stayed here, looking at you with those eyes that reminded you of someplace warm and talking about how terrible you are with a voice that you had grown to equate to happy times, the risk of you breaking apart grew greater and greater. You wanted her out of your house. Yes, you might have deserved a berating but if you had wanted to see a fucking life coach you would have had a heartfelt conversation with your mom.

And speaking of your mom, there was the distinct sound of her car pulling into the driveway, made more distinct by the fact that the door was still wide open since neither of you had bothered to close it. Your shoulders sagged the tiniest fraction downwards in relief, “No, I was feeling pretty fucking annoyed at you for a moment there but right now I just want you to leave.” Not only because your mom had gotten home, but also because you wanted to go to your garage and work until you couldn’t feel your fingers and you had forgotten this entire conversation had ever taken place.

She twisted her mouth in an expression of pity before she said, “Alright, I’ll go. But you might, um,” Roxy looked pained at the thought of what came next. You didn’t look forward to her next words, but you waited quietly all the same, “You should find somewhere else to sit at lunch. For a while.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll let you know when things are good again, but… Dirk, that was a really shitty thing to do. And it was a show of a new part of your character that might be hard to overlook so I wouldn’t be surprised if this never. You know. Works itself out.”

“Okay.” Holy shit just leave.

Roxy looked like she wanted to say more but Rose picked that moment to enter the conversation. She walked through the already open doorway, purse hanging from her shoulder, sunglasses pushed on top of her head, makeup as flawless as the moment she left the house. Despite the fact that there was zero reason for her to suspect Roxy might have decided to come over, Rose didn’t seem taken aback in the slightest to see her; not surprising, seeing as your mom always seemed to know everything. It was sometimes a little unnerving, “Hello, Roxy. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you around here.”

“Hi, Ms. Strider.” Roxy, eyes still shining in a way that you were going to see every time you closed your eyes for a month, pulled herself up. Before she turned her head to face your mother, her heartbroken expression melting flawlessly into something flat but amiable. It was strange to watch as an outsider something that you knew you had done a thousand times before.

“Oh heavens no, ‘Strider’ is a name I have no claim to whatsoever. You can just call me Rose. Dirk certainly does,” and Rose turned her gaze on your, head tilted as if to put on a show of how thoughtful she was, “I don't really think you have much claim to be a ‘Strider’ either. Maybe we should look into getting you a name change."

Fuck. No. After a short beat Roxy nodded quickly. She seemed to realize that it was best not to ask, “Rose. Got it.” You broke eye contact with your mom to watch Roxy. There was something curious in her expression, “I was actually just about to go, Dirk’s kicking me out.” She said it as a joke but you wouldn’t have disagreed.

Roxy slipped out the front door after a polite parting exchange with your mother. After Roxy had left, her newly acquired silver truck (16th birthday present that you hadn’t allowed yourself to be jealous of since you knew you would be lucky to get your permit before you were twenty, the way Rose talked about the subject) pulling away and down the street, Rose walked back to the door with a heavy sigh, “Why was my front door left open when I got home? You know that heating this house isn’t free.” Rose closed the door with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, ‘now was that so hard?’.

When you didn’t respond, she gave up her half-hearted attempt conversation with a soft click of her tongue, giving your shoulder a light pat when she walked past you to the kitchen. The red splotch on your cheek from Roxy's hand was still warm and tingled slightly when you turned your head to watch her. You were surprised that she hadn't mentioned the mark, but she was probably planning on bringing it up in the future to make some argument about how you still needed her to take care of you, or similar sounding bullshit. You swore Rose got off on doting on you- whenever you admitted to needing her help she positively melted, her voice turning to syrup. You got that she was your mother and it _should_ have been sweet but it just made you feel uncomfortable and insignificant.

You listened to the quiet clinking of glass as Rose undoubtedly fixed herself a drink as you started slowly trudging back to your room, your mind slipping quickly away from being numb while you pointedly struggled to not think about the fact that you had essentially just lost your three only friends in one blow. You tried to pinpoint exactly what you were feeling but it proved more difficult than you thought. After all, you couldn't be mad or upset since you were completely to blame. Frustrated, sure. You hadn’t expected that everyone would take this so seriously, shit, it was just _kissing_. You thought about what Roxy had said, about how they had somehow become emotionally involved. You knew it was a possibility but you didn’t think that it would entail such a drastic response.

All things considered you didn't regret what you had done. The only thing that you wished had gone differently was that it had worked. It would be nice to not have been slapped and it would be nice to know that Jane, Jake and Roxy still thought of you as their friend, but you would have happily done much worse things in effort to find something to bring you the same soft glow of comfort that you felt when you looked at Dave's pictures or heard his voice.

Your throat felt tight when you remembered that since you dumped your last-ditch escapade to find that warmth, you were left with nothing but the business card that by this point was faded and worn so much you doubted if you could call its number even if you wanted to. And you still didn't want to, as just the idea of interacting with him was terrifying. You had trouble believing you had already done so twice. You couldn't bear the idea that Dave isn't everything you imagined him to be, and keeping him only half real allowed you to preserve him as perfect. But shit if you weren't tempted to risk it and call him again right now. Maybe just to call and hear him say hello or maybe your name before hanging up. You almost audibly groaned at how deeply you craved to hearing that smooth voice, knowing that you weren't going to get up the nerve to actually call.

You flopped face down on to your bed, pulling your pillow down to bury your face in it in a small moment of indulgent self-pity. You had been putting off and putting off coming to terms with the weight of your situation, but now that your distraction plan was gone you started thinking hard about what you were going to do. For half a second you entertained the idea of following Rose's advice and moving on, leaving Dave as a thing of the past. The tidal wave of crushing anxiety that rushed forward at the prospect had you quickly rolling onto your back and pressing your palms against your eyes.

No no no no nooo way. No. Not an option.

A small voice in the back of your mind noted begrudgingly that maybe that reaction should have been a sign that what you were doing WAS really unhealthy and detrimental to your mental health, but you squashed that little voice like a motherfucker and started plotting how you were going to proceed.

The school had computers in the library. They were open for free use before and after school. There was a bus that ran by your house but it only reached the school ten minutes before the first bell. You could easily tell Rose that Roxy didn't want to give you a ride to school in the mornings anymore because you got into a fight, Rose had already seen the red blotch on your cheek that was your evidence. Rose left for work about an hour before you left for school so she could give you a ride in the mornings to get you to the school in plenty of time to watch Dave's interviews before enough people filled in the library that someone noticed what you were doing. Of course, that meant you had to take the bus home, reason being if Rose got home early and saw Roxy dropping you off she would know you were lying. Although it was very possible that Roxy ACTUALLY didn't want to give you rides to school anymore. She didn't specifically say that she didn't want to be friends with you anymore, just that you should stay away from Jane and Jake. You would ask her about it later, when things had settled down a little bit more. But you couldn’t just have the computers in the school’s library, you wanted something at home too. Summer vacation was growing closer every day and you couldn't go three months without any prospect of Dave.

What did you have at home? There was the business card, still tucked away in your wallet, but that was basically it.

An idea hits you so hard you sit up, your legs kicking off the side of your bed. You had never looked for the stupidly cliche family photo that Dave said had been taken of the three of you in your phone call. If it wasn't in your albums that meant that it was somewhere else and had the possibility of being hidden somewhere in your house. And if there was one photo that you hadn't seen before maybe there would be others.

You forced yourself not to start looking instantly. If Rose hadn't wanted you to see it it was going to hidden very, very well. Or, you know. She could have thrown out all the photos years ago and now there were rotting away in a landfill somewhere. You tried not to get your hopes up too much but, Christ, you were already pushing back a small, excited smile. Photos! New photos!  They could be of anything. You spent a few minutes daydreaming about what you could find- plenty pic of you and Rose probably, since it seemed that Dave had been the photographer in most of the pics, but if you found pictures, new picture, of Dave holding you or just looking at you or kissing the top of your head you would probably literally melt into the floor. Oh man. You felt your stomach grow light thinking about finding a picture of that last idea and your smile grew. Shit, honestly any show of affection from Dave to you would... most likely have not exist. Most of the pictures that you had seen of the two of you were pretty distant. Like Rose and Dave were your babysitters and not your brother and mom. But maybe, _maybe_  these pictures were different (if they were even around).

**  
**~~~  
  


You started getting to school early, watching Dave's videos in the library before school started, pretended like you didn't see the three people who had previously been your best friends during school hours and looking for the photos everyday after you got home. The first day that Rose dropped your off in her car, wishing you a good day with a sweet smile that lead you to think that she enjoyed her more involved role in the new arrangement more than she let on, you had almost ran to the library, sliding into the seat in front of the farthest computer from the door and booting it up impatiently, plugging in headphones and pulling up a speech he had given at the closing ceremony of some film festival a few years back. You closed your eyes and let yourself fall into the sound of his voice. You imagined that if one of the librarians happened to look over at you, they would be able to see the stress and tension melting out of you and collecting on the floor by your chair. His voice, his word choice, his inflections twisted together and wrapped around you like a warm quilt. It was by far the highlight of your day and what you thought about when you found the only empty seat at lunch was next to a small boy that introduced himself as Caliborn and loudly talked about exclusively disgusting things for the entire forty minutes. You thought you felt someone watching you during lunch but you didn't dare look back to the tables that you knew Roxy, Jane and Jake were sitting at to see if it was one of them.

After school, in two and a half hours between when you walk in the front door and when Rose got home, you carefully sorted through all the possible places that Rose could have hidden the other photos. You didn't want her to suspect you were looking, since her track records strongly hinted that she would not be happy with that information, so progress as slow. You would go through only a little bit everyday, putting everything back precisely as you found it. Working with hopeful patience, you waded through all the boxes in the attic, the shelves of storage in the garage that weren't dedicated to holding your own tools and eventually the drawers and storage in Rose's room. You were even more careful about looking through Rose's things, not just because you knew your mom was an adult and you prone to find a variety of things you didn't ever want to think about, but also because she was more likely to notice that something was misplaced.

Right when you were about to consider giving up your search, you found something. It wasn’t the photo's but a small, square safe about two foot deep, sitting on the floor of Rose's closet. When you saw the worn looking box you sat down in front of it and instantly started trying combinations. Most safes had three number codes, so you tried your birthday, Rose's birthday, Kanaya's birthday (you had to spend some time online trying to figure this one out), Rose's PIN broken into varying three segments, a few other numbers that might be significant to Rose. When none of them worked, you looked for the make and model of the safe so you could google it later, to see if maybe this specific safe had certain instructions for unlocking. You quickly tried Rose's birthday one more time before sighing silently and resetting the dial to how you found it. The discovery of the safe renewed your spirit, as you figured that if Rose had a safe she might have more hidden things as well.

A few more weeks slipped by, everyday following the same pattern as before. Lunches spent with Caliborn were a certain kind of hell that you could avoid by eating lunch in another area of the school, but you dealt with for a number of reasons. First of all, it was a nice reminder that there were people more messed up than you in the world. Secondly, you found a certain kind of amusement in how ignorant and confident he was at the same time, and lastly, you almost childishly dreamed that any day now Roxy would walk over and invite you back to your seat and you wanted to be in the cafeteria ~~if~~ when that happened, so she could find you.

You didn't exactly miss the company of your friends. Not as much as you thought you would. It actually surprised you how little you were bothered by their absence but you tried not to dwell on this, as it reminded you of Roxy’s little speech. But you would pick them over Caliborn any day of the week.

With the arrival of the second to last week of school brought both a growing panic that you were never going to find the photos you were looking for juxtaposed to a growing indifference for the idea that you were going to be welcomed back to you old lunch table. It was like you were siphoning all your emotions regarding your friends directly to care more about Dave.

You spent those last ten days of school skipping lunch to watch Dave’s videos in the library, figuring you were better off spending your time loading up on Dave than you were waiting for Jane and Jake to come around.

Summer came quicker than you hoped. You no longer had to deal with the bullshit that was high school, but you still hadn’t found any hints to pictures of Dave being under your roof. With the break from school you suddenly had a remarkable amount of extra time but you had run out of places to search. You had spent some of you time trying to revert the internet blocks on your laptop, but either Rose was a better programmer than you gave her credit or she had some talented friends, because you had no luck and, after weeks of frustrating results, gave up. Besides, by this point you had watched all the video’s of him so many times that they didn’t have the same allure that fresh content did.

And fuck if the vague hope of fresh content hadn’t ensnared your full attention. When Rose was at work you sometimes spent hours sitting in her closet next to the safe, reading or playing flash games on your laptop. There was no promise that the safe actually contained anything of value to you, but just the idea that it could, by some miracle, contain the pictures you were looking for was enough to draw you to it.

You spent most of your free time that Rose _was_  at home in your garage, taking apart old projects to have parts for new ones again and again, unable to afford to buy more materials for every project. Rose often walked into the garage and sat down on a spare bench, sometimes just watching you work, sometimes asking you questions. You often explained to her what you were making and what it was going to do, and she would listen politely, nodding and sipping a clear drink you would bet your life’s savings wasn’t water.

Once she asking if you were excited to be a senior you just made a face and asked, “Can’t I just take online classes? I only need three more credits to graduate, it seems like a waste of time and tax dollars to send me to school for an entire year.”

She blinked at you, “But don’t you want to graduate like a normal kid? With the rest of your class? If you take online classes can you still walk at the end of the year?”

“I don’t really care.”

You tightened a bolt and reached for a new one before she talked again, “Dirk, honey, you’re already graduating early, you just turned sixteen and you’ve completed eleventh grade. There’s no need to outshine everyone more that you already are, people will start to think you’re bragging.”

“What do I have to benefit from going to school for another year?”

She was quiet and you knew she agreed with your point. “It’s not that it’s not a good idea. I just wish...” You looked up, waiting for her to continue. She smiled at you, a half sad half embarrassed turn of the mouth. “I was only going to say that I wish you could have every experience in the world. I want you experience the classic graduation fiasco, and I want you to experience whatever doors will open to you by getting your GED by sixteen. I want you to have both. Which is silly, I know, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing I could give it to you.” She swooshed the liquid around the mostly empty glass before taking another sip, “You are going to live a wonderful life, Dirk. I’m sure of it. Graduating early won’t stop that from happening, so of course you can, if you’re sure that’s what you want.” The answer surprised you and you didn't know what to say so you just stared at her. After a moment she raised one eyebrow playfully, “If you're making plans to twist my words to validate a escapade riddled with illegal activities then stop. You can wait for those experience until I'm no longer around to hear about them. Actually there's quite a few things you will hopefully never ever do and I would die before I wished them on you. Like... car wrecks. Although I guess some positive things can come from wrecks in you have good insurance."

She was rambling, "Are you sure you're okay with this?"

"Yes. I am," Rose sighed deeply and composed herself, "Ninety percent of that was the vodka talking but the approval was sincere."

"Ninety percent vodka and ten percent what?"

"Ten percent was me being jealous of how smart you are."

"So the sentimentality and love was from the vodka. Thanks, Mother."

She winked at you with a small, fond smiled and then looked back at her glass, "Mm. Okay that's it for me tonight, I should pour out the rest. But that's such a waste..." She paused, "Hey, you want the rest of my drink? Say no."

You felt the corner of your lips twitch into a small smile, "No."

She rolled her eyes over-dramatically, "Fine, then I guess I'll finish it! Making a lady drink alone, I thought I raised you better.”

 

~~~

 

Rose had been dating Kanaya for as long as you could remember but, like most thing in her life, Rose didn’t talk to you about her much. You guessed they worked together, picking up on little hints here and there from the way Rose talked when she told you short, nonspecific anecdotes about her day, but other than that were completely in the dark about the details in their relationship. They could be married, for all you knew.

When Rose told announced a few days after the conversation in the garage that she was going out with Kanaya and that she would be back in the morning, you told her to have fun and you would be okay. She patted your cheek, reminded you there were leftovers in the refrigerator. You might have imagined the way she hesitated before she left, like she wanted to say more and then thought better of it.

You listened to the door close and finished stripping and connecting the bundle of wire that were sticking out of the side of the neck of the robot you were making (you had written considerably more code for this one than any robots previous, experimenting with developing something that had an ability to freely describe things around it). When all the wires were connected you stood up, wiped the oil and dirt off your hands on a towel you kept for that exact purpose, clicked off the fan and walked into the house.

You weren’t sweaty or particularly thirsty from working, but you poured yourself a glass of water anyways and leaned against the counter while you drank it, tapping the fingers of your free hand in a pattern while you thought. When your glass was empty you walked across the kitchen and opened Rose’s liquor cabinet.

For a long moment you just stood in front of the multitude of drinks, reading the labels and wondering if this was a good idea. Rose’s words from the other day and Roxy's speech flickered through your mind and before you could talk yourself out of it you set down your glass and grabbing the tall bottle that was front and center.

The label read ‘vodka’ when you twisted the bottle to read it. Made sense that her favorite drink would be closest to the front. Without hesitation you unscrewed the black cap and poured it carefully into your glass. You replaced the lid and set the bottle back into the cabinet, turning the label out like you had found it. For a moment you felt a small surge of panic when you saw that the level in the clear glass container was obviously lower than before but you calmed yourself knowing that these levels were always changing and there was no way Rose knew exactly how much of every drinks she had. You picked up your drink before you could get cold feet.

As soon as the fumes hit your nose you set it back down. It smelled like gasoline. You made a face and held the glass away from you. Ugh. You took a breathe through your mouth and then raised the glass again but the memory of the smell was enough to make your stomach twist. You set the drink back down.

Leaving the glass on the counter you hunted down a cup with a lid, one of the plastic ones that you think Rose got at a grocery store a few years ago. You found one and brought it back to your drink, pouring the small amount of liquid in the cup and started screwing on the lid before pausing again. If it smelled like poison it was probably going to taste like poison too, right? Hmm. Wait no, okay, time to practice your bartending. You pulled open the refrigerator and grabbed the bottle of orange juice, removing the top and pouring it gratuitously in with your vodka before adding ice. There. Perfect.

After placing the oj back where you had found it and after you rinsed out the first cup you had used (twice. With soap. (Rose would probably be fine with you drinking but you didn't want to have that conversation with her if she smelled the pungent drink on a cup she didn't use)) your drink found its way back into your hands. You could do this. You could drink alcohol that didn't smell and - hopefully- didn't taste awful, if it meant... if it meant what? Why were you doing this? Maybe you were bored. Maybe you wanted to see why Rose drank all the time.

Maybe you were fucking sick of feeling nothing and finding synthetic happiness was easier than pinpointing just what the hell was wrong with you.

You drank you first drink slowly, sitting on the floor of the kitchen, thinking about the robot that you had left in the garage. There was enough orange juice to dilute the taste enough that your drink only mostly tasted like juice. You felt a little silly and a little disappointed because so far your first real rebellious act was basically just drinking orange juice from a cup with a straw while sitting on the floor of your kitchen. When your sipping turned into noisy slurping, you stood back up- okay you were a little dizzy but that could just be headrush- and made yourself a second drink, adding more vodka and less orange juice this time around. It was far more sharp than the first glass and the first sip made you cringe but nothing even you couldn't handle.

You turned your back on the counter and played with the straw of your cup while you looked around the kitchen. The old radio that Rose used Saturday mornings to listen to NPR caught your eye. It was small and tucked away behind the flour and sugar jars so you never really paid it much mind. You didn't take much enjoyment in listening to music, It mostly just felt like needless noise, but you still found the power button and brought it to life, filling the room with the quiet voices of whoever was hosting whatever talkshow was on air. You took a few sips from your cup as you searched through the stations, not knowing what you were looking for, before landing on a station that was playing a tune that sounded slightly familiar. Maybe Jane had played it off her phone. You turned the volume up and listened to the simple instrumental that was probably something you would enjoy if the lyrics weren't so cheesy and it wasn't being played through such a low quality speaker. You changed the station again and caught a few advertisements before you landed on a song with a fuller sound. You turned up the volume until the speakers gave out on the heavier notes and then turned it down a little to keep the quality as not-shitty as you could. Damn, Rose, you could buy a new radio. Not that you were planning on picking up the habit of listening to one but maybe you would consider it if the songs didn't sound like they were being played by a toaster. You wished you had listened to the radio in Dave's car while you were there. His radio had probably been connected to the nicest sound system you were ever going to encounter.

You tapped your fingers to against the side of your cup to the beat, feeling... basically the same as your always did. Ugh. Sure your chest felt comfortably warm but was that couldn't be what all the hype was about. You made a face and wondered absurdly if alcohol just didn't work for you, but you quickly brushed off the idea and decided you just needed to drink more. After all, if Rose, even in joking, thought that alcohol was a substitute for love then maybe so would you. If you didn’t need Dave and just needed a few shots of vodka you’re life would be a thousand times simpler. Vodka could be bought down the road, while Dave was the most intangible thing you could imagine. You popped the top off your cup and downed the rest of your drink, your throat and chest flaming warmer as it went down. You set your cup that now just contained ice down and closed your eyes, enjoying the heat.

This wasn't what you were expecting. You didn't feel happier or like you were in a haze, you just kind of wanted to take a nap. That's not to say it wasn't... nice. Kind of relaxing, you guessed. But the purpose of this wasn't to relax and you were going to see it all the way through. The song had ended and peppy voices announcing the next song replaced it. You reached out to turn off the radio but the flicker of a thought passed through your mind of _'wait, doesn't Dave like music? He said it was a shame I didn't listen to it and his speaker system was top of the line....'_ so you left it on, staring at the small black speakers like they were somehow distasteful. Why couldn't Dave enjoy something more... less... annoying? You decided that a good compromise between turning the radio off and making your brother proud was finding a station that like liked. You changed the stations slowly. Country, no. Alternative, no. Commercial, commercial, commercial... more country (fucking Texas ugh), some pop song about following dreams, rap, more alternative, commercial-

...wait no hang on.

You rewound the stations until the rap song flowed from the speakers. It was crude and basic and you didn't like it much more than the other stuff but you found yourself smiling at the thought of the stereotype you were quickly falling into. The sixteen year old rebellious teenager that abused substance and listened to trashy rap. All you needed to complete the image was to wear a hat backwards and some basketball shorts. Yeah, this station would do.

You let the heavy beat keep you company while you mixed a third drink, using a different bottle because you were really draining the original. Lucky for you, Rose has many bottles of vodka. You were a little tempted to try something else but you had grown fond of your oj/vodka combo, and wasn't there a common warning against mixing your liquors? You weren't exactly sure what that meant but you figured better safe than sorry. You only poured a couple inches of vodka into the bottom of your cup, sloshing about a cup of orange juice in with it.

This time you took your drink to the living room, the bass of the rap song spilling over from the kitchen. You tried to nod your head to the beat but that made you really, really dizzy. Well no not exactly. It was a little bit like being dizzy but... thicker?  You decided that it was felt weird, so you sat down on the couch, listening to the song.

You wondered if Dave liked rap. All you knew was that he seemed to value music, you had no clue as to if he liked classical or country or hip hop or jazz. What would he have to say about the song that was playing right now? You listened closer to the words and the beat and decided that yeah. He would probably think this song was at least okay. Maybe?

It was frustrating to the billionth power that you actually had no idea what opinion Dave would have (and thinking about him sent you jolts of longing that the alcohol in your system seemed to think was a good thing to get really really sad about) so instead of thinking about Dave you drank deeply, concentrating on how the drink burned. Your head was getting lighter by the moment but you didn't necessarily feel better. You didn't feel less empty. But the more you drank the less you cared and the easier it was to convince yourself that it wasn't a problem and that you would be okay.

Four mediocre songs and three commercials later, your glass was empty for the third time. You wanted to clean the residue alcohol out of it before you could forget, so you stood up you and had the same feeling of headrush from before, this time ten time worse. You waiting for the world to stop tilting and wondered if maybe you had too much. Whoops. Hopefully you wouldn't throw up all your work.

That would be perfect though, wouldn't it? No positive results, there is vomit all over the living room floor, and he hates himself just that much more as his idea catapults assfirst into the mortifying wasteland of failure. Wow, no way, imagine that, Dirk Strider has a plan to feel loved and it doesn't succeed at all. Incredible.

Your breath caught as soon as the thought passed, and Roxy's words came crashing down on you. ‘You are desperate to feel something more than apathy’, shit if that didn’t sum you up right now. You hadn't allowed yourself to let her words sink it at the time, but now, months later, head rushing with alcohol, you couldn't stop yourself from agreeing with her. You wanted to understand why people cried at the end of a good book. Why mothers would die to protect their kids. Why someone would put someone else wants before their own. You wanted to know what was so special about love that people would go to war to protect it and write poems and sonnets and stories and songs filled with beautiful words because they couldn't keep the feelings to himself.

The room blurred. You couldn't tell if it was a symptom of being drunk or if it had anything to do with the heat prickling behind your eyes and collecting in your throat.

You stumbled your way back to the kitchen and put the glass in the sink before turning the water on and just letting the water fill it up. There. Good enough. You turned the water off and and was about to turn around to probably go to your room and go to sleep when you heard a quiet _thump_  from behind you.

You froze and slowly reached to the side to turn off the radio (you had to try twice, missing the button on your first try). Killed the power, chopping the song off halfway through a word, leaving the kitchen in a sudden, thick silence. You strained your ears for any more sound but the only thing you could hear was your own breathing and the drip drip drip from the last of the water escaping the faucet. As the seconds wore on you figured the noise might have just been a really big bug or a bird hitting the side of the house or hell, you might have imagined it, although you doubted that last option. This wasn't the first time that you had heard an unexplained thump or creak around your house and you almost wished that you had a cat or a dog that you could blame them on.

It was eons past dumb but sometimes you pretended that they were caused by your brother, in a universe where the two of your lived under the same roof, and if you wanted you could turn around and ask him how his day was or what his opinion was on... rap music, or whatfuckingever.

You slowly came back to life, walking (carefully, clumsily) out of the kitchen and towards, not your room, but Rose's. You planning on sitting in front of that safe until the sky opened up and God's voice boomed the passcode combination to you. You _wanted_  to go to your own room and pass the hell out but more than that you missed Dave. You fucking missed him. And although you had next to no hope of ever finding the photos you were looking for, that metal safe at the bottom of Rose's closet was where your useless, loveless, pathetic ass wanted to go, and who were you to argue? You knew that if sober-Dirk couldn't figure the combination then drunk-Dirk hadn't a sliver of a chance, but maybe just sitting next to something that you had associated with Dave over the last few weeks woul- what the hell.

The door to the safe was slightly ajar, the lock innocently resting on top.

You leaned against the door frame as the floor tilted a little and this time you knew it wasn't due to the alcohol. Had Rose just forgotten to lock it?? Did she leave it open for you? No, of course she didn’t leave it open that was ridiculous, Rose kept her secrets well.

Not that you knew that what was in the safe was a secret. For all you knew the safe could be filled with… tax forms. Or birth certificates or extra cash or important paperwork from Rose’s work or really anything. You had spent so long wistfully thinking about how great it would be to crack into this that It was unnerving to actually have the opportunity to look inside. You didn’t even really know if you wanted to. The odds of the safe actually having photos in it were laughably small anyways. What if you just didn’t look? This could just stay forever as a Schrödinger's safe. The more you thought about it, the more you liked that idea but this was Dave you were talking about. Like you couldn’t really just let this opportunity pass you by. You took a few deep breaths and pushed yourself away from the wall, preparing for disappointment.

Sitting slowly down next to the safe, careful to give the door room to open, you made a plan. If the content of the safe weren’t pictures of Dave, you were going to leave everything as you found it, close the door, stand back up and walk your ass to your room. You weren’t going to be upset or panic, you were going to go to sleep and in the morning you would decided what to do next.

“Alright,” you muttered, looking at the handle, not moving, “I’m going to open this. I’m doing it. Now. Right now.” You still didn’t move. You tried pep-talking yourself again. “Dirk, open the safe, you useless sack of shit, oh my god it’s just a metal box, don’t freak out,” You hooked the edge or your fingers around the handle and pulled through the surprising amount of resistance that you were met with.

As soon as you saw the contents of the safe you looked away. And then looked back, blinking, before  holding your spinning head in your hands, overwhelmed with relief.

The spine of your old photo albums were as recognizable to you as your own reflection. And your impossibly wonderful luck gave you more than that- a promising stack of four by six pictures rested on top of the albums.

Your heartbeat was somewhere in your throat and you had to take a few breaths to fight the thickness in your head. Fucking shit, you didn't want to be drunk for this, you wanted to be able to enjoy this as much as you possibly could, why did universe despise making anything simple for you why why why. As soon as you could you grabbed the stack and started carefully flipping through them and holy mother of god, these pictures were new.

The first picture was not much, just a picture of you fast asleep, your pudgy baby face as peaceful as it was cute. You couldn’t imagine why Rose would keep this picture locked away in a fucking safe, but there was some damage around the edges. Like maybe someone had scraped the ink off in places, leaving white and pinkish streaks across the image. Maybe she didn’t want to throw it away but also didn’t want to display it in the albums? You flipped through a few more pictures of you and a couple of Rose to find (ah-ha! Finally!) one of Dave, looking... oh.

The wind was nearly knocked out of you. The picture was of slightly over decent resolution, and captured Dave was looking just past the camera, sharp red eyes squinted slightly with a bright and honest smile. Your chest bloomed with a new kind of concentrated, sticky warmth as you stared, wide eyes, head spinning with more than just alcohol. He looked happier than you had ever seen him, and if that wasn’t enough to make your heart ache, you had forgotten how breathtaking his eyes were and right now it was hitting you in a way that you imagined was about what it felt like to be an unlucky pedestrian on the autobahn, or a bug at the moment it meets it’s end on some bastards windshield. Dave always wore sunglasses for the public so you hadn’t seen his eyes since Rose confiscated your pictures. There was something slightly dangerous about the bright red that pulled you in in a way that you understood but couldn’t explain. God. You wanted to look at the other photos but you pathetically couldn’t tear your eyes away from this one long enough.

Eventually you sat the intoxicating picture to the side and started sifting through the others. You passed quite a few more of you but you didn’t pause long enough on those to tell what you were doing but you could tell a lot of them had that same type of damage as before, the white and pink lines.

About twenty pictures later you come across a very professional looking photo. With a delighted, smug self-satisfaction, you realized that it was the same photo that Dave had mentioned. The painfully forced and awkward family photo that Dave swore that you wouldn’t find. You stayed smug for about .004 seconds, which was the time it took you to realize that there was not three people in the photo, but four.

There was Dave, in his shades, looking stunning and bored. Rose, eyes twinkling with amusement. You were there too, orange eyes wide and staring straight at the camera.

And then there was a girl.

She was older than you but just slightly and was looking to the side the moment the photo was snapped, eyes trained on Rose.

Was Rose babysitting for a friend that day? Why would Rose take an obnoxious family picture with a kid who wasn’t in the family? Or maybe she was in the family, maybe she was a cousin or a half sibling. Actually now that you thought about it you didn’t know jack shit about your family. Rose never offered up the information and you never asked, and the two of you both seemed content to keep it that way. But you suddenly found yourself thinking that it might have been nice to be raised with other kids, and to have people your own age that were family. You found solace in the quiet, but you wouldn’t hate sharing the house with one more kid. Just someone that would be around if you needed someone to listen or a player two. Like a cousin or a sister.

Or, you know, your brother. Ugh.

Wisps of familiar resentment uncoiled and made themselves known. You sighed, picking up your new favorite picture of Dave wondering for the hundred thousandth time what compelled him to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could travel back in time and somehow fix whatever went wrong or talk him out of leaving.

You flipped through your old albums for old time’s sake, blinking heavily at the images as nostalgia and drunkenness swirled together happily in your stomach, trying to enjoy each image as much as you could. You knew you couldn’t take them with you and who knew if Rose would ever accidentally forget to close the safe again.

Eventually, too quickly, the threat of falling asleep here and incriminating yourself in at least three different ways became too great to ignore. You replaced everything how you found it, minus the one picture of Dave that stopped your heart every time you glanced it. Like fuck you were going to put that picture back. That picture was finding a new home in your room.

Even in your sleepy and inebriated state, you were careful to arrange everything how you had found it, not aware of how tightly Rose kept all this on lockdown. You had a quick mental debate if you should leave the safe unlocked or lock it, knowing that if Rose knew that she left it unlocked, finding it locked would raise suspicious, but if Rose didn’t mean to leave it unlocked and forgot that she had done so, finding the lock in place would be expected. You decided that locking it would be the safest route, since you can always claim that you relocked without looking inside. It was significantly less believable to say you unlocked it without looking inside.

That night you dreamed of the girl from the picture, sitting and playing with blocks. There were distant voices, muffled as if coming from underwater. The scene sounded like home and felt like laughter. When you woke up the next morning, mouth dry and head thick, you remembered the dream for a hardly a moment before the scene slipped through the cracks in your mind, and was gone.

**  
**~~~  
  


Summer passed, but true to Rose’s word you didn’t return to high school. You started taking online classes for the few credits you still needed to complete and since they were self-paced, you were able to fly through them. Only a few weeks before your birthday you had passed your last test

You remember sitting back in your chair at your desk and staring at the screen with a creeping feeling of aimlessness. You had been working towards finished high school for years and now that you were here, what did you do next? College was obviously the next step from an outside standpoint but you weren’t sure if Rose could afford that, and you weren’t sure if you would want to go even if she could. You had no idea what you would study, since you had no idea what you wanted to make your career. You weren't passionate enough about anything to devote your life to it.

You spent most of your time after that in your garage, working on your robots.

The day of your seventeenth birthday you woke up to the smell of bacon. You rolled over and checked the clock. 7:09. Nice. Waking up early was something you always found a certain kind of peace in. There was a peculiar sort of quiet in the air and the faint sounds of birds singing outside the windows made the world feel not so lonely and huge if only for just a few hours.

Standing up slowly, you rolled your shoulders to get your blood flowing, already walking over to your computer. Instead of booting it on, you squatted in front of your desk, reaching underneath it to remove the picture that was taped there. The picture you had pulled from Rose’s safe. Sitting in your desk chair, you held the picture in both hands.

“Happy birthday, bro,” You mumbled, wondering if Dave was awake yet, wherever he was. What he was thinking about right now? Maybe he was thinking about how to celebrate his birthday. You couldn’t imagine that he didn’t celebrate at all. The most fitting thing you could think of was that he was probably going to spend the day hanging out with a ton of famous, rich friends and then stay out late to party and end up getting fantastic birthday sex from some hot fan that recognizes him at a club.  After some thought you added, “But not too happy. You fucker.”

After replacing the photo to it’s safe place under the desk, you pulled on an old t-shirt on, a fitting match to your grey sweatpants, and shuffled to the kitchen, following the smell of bacon.

“Good morning, Dirk,” Rose gave you a small smile when you walked in the room, her voice mixing with the quiet sizzling coming from the pan on the stove, “I thought I would get up early and make a good breakfast before I leave for work, since, as I’m sure you are aware of, today is very special.”

You looked at the tables and noticed the decent-sized stack of pancakes already there and you felt a tug of affection, “Yeah, isn’t today National Roof Over Your Head day?”

“I haven’t a clue. It wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

“Hm. Well I know that today marks the anniversary of the death of Diocletian.”

“Dirk."

“He died on December 3rd at the ripe age of only sixty-six. Rest in peace.”

Rose didn’t respond right away, turning away from you so she could take the bacon off the stove and onto a plate. When she finally did speak it wasn’t to humor you, “What do you want to drink? I think we’re out of lemonade, but we have milk and water.”

“Water’s fine,” You watched Rose now, carefully. Something was off.

You helped her prepare the rest of the breakfast and set it on the table before sitting down, exchanging only short sentences. Once you you had both taken a few bites Rose cleared her throat.

"So. Happy birthday."

"Thanks."

"Any plans to celebrate?"

"Not really. I might binge watch the lamest show I can find, if I'm still in the mood later."

It was careful speech. Every word clean and intentional from both parties.

Rose was watching you in a way that was a little too intentional for you to loose all the tension in your shoulders and slump against your seat. You often got the feeling that she somehow knew more about yourself than you did and it was unnerving to say the least. You stabbed a bite of your pancakes with your fork and rolled it in syrup until it was drenched before popping it in your mouth. Rose went back to paying attention to her meal.

Breakfast passed with a few dismissive exchanges started from you. 'Thanks again for cooking.' 'Don't mention it.' 'Hows work?' 'Could be better.' 'Are you ok?' 'I'm fine.' You quickly just gave up and accepted that your birthday was going to pass with you mother in a rather bitter mood.

You helped clear the table when you were both done eating, the only sounds in the small kitchen the quiet clinking of dishes. After the kitchen was back to a semi-orderly state (it was perpetually cluttered with a small assortment of things, never really fully clean. Both of you liked it that way.) you retreated back to your room.  You sat back at your desk and blankly stared at your dead computer screen, you fingers wrapping around the edge of the desk to absentmindedly touch the photo was was taped there.

Was Rose okay? She wasn’t typically loquacious but her silence was never cold. Or it hadn’t ever been before today. What could have possibly made her act like that?

You brainstormed for a few moments while your computer booted, creating a short list in your head of possibilities. Trouble at work seemed like the best option. You let loose a quiet sigh, hoping that whatever it was she wouldn’t be down for long. Yes, she could be confusing and was you had never been exceptionally close, but she was still your mother and you would be lying if you said you didn’t care for her.

You had only been fucking around on your computer for about twenty minutes when a glimpse of white caught your attention. There was what looked like a regular piece of printer paper, folded neatly in fourths. It was innocently resting on the corner of your desk, a space that you could have sworn was empty just a few moments ago. Huh.

You didn’t even pause the show that you were watching, just reached over picked up the little rectangle, flipping it over to check for hints as to what it might be. Odds were it was something of Rose’s that had ended up here by accident. Maybe she had snuck in to give you a birthday card. For a moment, you considered just dealing with it later, but curiosity got the better of you and you distractedly smoothed the paper flat where it was on the corner of your desk, beside your laptop and in front of the issues of Game Bro that you and Jake had both subscribed to as a joke. Your eyes skimmed the inked words with growing disbelief.   

Something loud happened in the episode you were watching, redirecting your attention to the screen, but instead of watching you quickly hit the spacebar, taking your earbuds out and picking the note up to read with the beginnings of trembling hands.

 

_hey kiddo,_

_happy birthday. i mean damn, seventeen. it feels like just last week you were sitting in booster seat throwing cheerios all over the fucking kitchen like they were confetti at it was new years and you had had one too many toasts of champagne. soon youll catch up to me and well sit around and talk about grandkids and our 401k. or_

__

You flipped the paper over again, looking for any markings you could have missed, your breath coming slightly quicker. There was no way. You were dreaming. You were in a coma or you had slipped into some alternate reality. There was no way you were holding a letter from Dave, an actual letter, that he actually wrote with his actual hands. But as your eyes fell to the end of the page and you saw the signature there was no way you could avoid the simple fact. You didn’t get much farther the second time you tried to read it.

 

_hey kiddo,_ __

_happy birthday. i mean damn, seventeen. it feels like just last week you were sitting in booster seat throwing cheerios all over the fucking kitchen like they were confetti at it was new years and you had had one too many toasts of champagne. soon youll catch up to me and well sit around and talk about grandkids and our 401k. or we could. not. rose told me that you want me to leave you be and fuck dirk im trying to respect that b-_

The air in your lungs turned to ice.

What.

What what what the actual fuck. You read the line again. Twice. And then you put the letter down and stood up to pace around your small bedroom four times, taking deep breathes, before returning, jittery, to your chair, deciding you would at least get through reading the letter before you jumped to any rash conclusions. Against your better judgement you picked up where you left off, reading slower than you had ever in your life, examining each and every word like you were translating runes.

_i’m trying to respect that but i thought just one letter on your birthday wouldn't hurt. and shit today is actually my birthday too so instead of getting myself some useless junk off amazon this one piece of paper doubles as my gift to myself and when you look at it that way it really is just the most economically efficient option. please dont be mad at me for trying to save a few bucks. (this is the part where i would lure you in by making a few well-placed jokes about not actually needing to care if i save a few bucks and look how financially stable i am and how i am equipped to raise a child hahaha come live with me but i’m not doing that, see?)._

_it’s actually kinda funny because i have this super long list of shit i want to talk to you about but now that i’m actually letting myself contact you the only thing that i want to talk about is myself. maybe because it’s my birthday and i’m feeling pretty self indulgent. i don’t know how much you know yet so i’ll keep this vague as my IMBD bio but i liked it when you called. it kind of made my entire week. i also really had a good time when you let me drive you around a little. that was cool of you._

__

There were a few words worth of space here that were scratched out with ink so vigorously that you spent a few moments wondering why he didn’t just start over before you kept reading, hardly able to stop.

 

_also did you ever get to watch sweet bro and hella jeff? it’s nbd if you didn’t, but i have a feeling you might like them. more like ‘i hope you’ll like them’. idk you might. we are related after all, and i’m pretty sure that some sense of humor is genetic, so you might have inherited the strider’s love of absolute shit. if by some wonderful and miraculous chance you have both watched them and enjoyed them, you have been given an excellent gift to make almost any dull event entertaining. use your power wisely._

_aahaha. wow this letter is shit. i should just scrap it and start over tbqh but fuck that scene i have important things to do. no matter how good or bad i feel the end product is i’ll probably spent the next twelve decades wondering what your two cents are on all this but i already spend an embarrassing amount of time wondering what’s going through your mind like basically all the time (there’s a joke here that you don’t get. reread this is a few years and maybe it’ll be funny then) so what else is new. it’s annoying sometimes because i dont have much to work with but from what i could tell from our few encounters you seem pretty cool. i don’t know how much of it is because you’re my bro and all that and how much of it is because you’re dirk strider but you’re pretty much an alright guy in my book. under other circumstances i know we could have been bro’s. real bro’s. no wait i mean. not real bros not that bro’s are fake that’s not what i mean either but like. friends. we could have been friends._

 

Under the letter was a shitty drawing of a guy with pointy hair doing some sort of cool trick on a skateboard wearing a party hat with a ‘17’ on it. The word’s ‘this is you’ with an arrow pointing to the guy were scrawled next to the drawing, and then below everything the formal ‘sincerely, d. strider’, accompanied with the sloppy mark of anyone who has signed their signature too many times.

Between the signature and the picture were a few words and a couple numbers. You pretended that you didn’t know what they were.

You read the entire thing over twice. Three times. Then you read the first paragraph at least five times, each time the careful simmer of something dark grew hotter in the pit of your stomach. Folding the letter back how it had been, you collected your picture of Dave from under the desk and your wallet, slipping all three into your pocket of your sweatpants before rethinking it and changing into jeans. You then shut down your laptop. Put on socks, your only pair of shoes, grabbed a jacket from your closet and headed back to the living room to find Rose.

She was sitting on the couch, reading. A picture of peace. When she saw you her eyes only flickered towards you for a second before going back to her book.

“If you’re going out you might want to get a bigger coat, it’s pretty bad out there.”

“Tell me about Dave.” Rose only sighed, silently, just a rise and fall of her shoulders, like she saw this coming a mile away. She turned the page of her book. the whisper of rustling paper reaching your ears while you talked, “Tell me everything. I know your opinions on him but I need to hear the truth from you. I swear this is the last I’ll talk to you about him if you just,” your voice was getting thicker, wrapping with a hint of some delicate emotion, “Tell me. Rose, please, I need to know.”

She met your gaze for the first time since you entered the room. Her eyes were cold. “I’ve already told you.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Dirk,” her voice was low. A warning. You pulled the letter out of your pocket and held it up.

“He remembered my birthday. He wrote me a letter. And I’ve talked to him. I’ve talked to him a couple times and he’s actually... he’s...I can’t imagine him doing something so cruel. I can’t image him leaving. And I’ve tormented myself over it because if someone like him can ditch so easily then what the hell is wrong with us, you know? But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to it. That you’re not telling me everything. The pieces just don’t line up.”

Rose was quiet for a very long time. You were about ready to give up when she finally spoke, a flat and careful sound, “I am trying to be a good mother, Dirk. All I have done has only been for your sake. I know you’re fond of him but if I mean anything to you at all, trust me when I say that it’s better if you two stay apart.”

It was all the confirmation you needed.

“...Oh my god.” It was only just above a whisper. Your eyes broke away from Rose and stared blindly at the air to your left while her words sank in.

So it was true. Dave had been right. Why were you not surprised? You felt as if you should be shocked or numb or devastatingly sad, but the only emotions you could conjure in that moment was a wash of relief.

He hadn’t lied after all.

The relief was slowly twinged with a prick of anger and confusion. Rose kicked him out for whatever her reasons had been but then denied it for what, so you wouldn’t resent her? So she would look like the good guy, protecting you from the evil Dave Strider?? You had spent your entire life feeling completely fucking rejected by him, and she knew that, Rose knew that better than anyone, but she kept feeding you the same lies to make sure that you didn’t shatter the delusion that she so carefully created, but why? A delusion around not only your eyes but apparently Dave’s as well, when you thought about the letter. You had so many questions. You supposed now was as good a time as any to try to get some answers.

“Why did you do it?” Your voice was hollow, concealing flames that were low-key flickering and hot and feeding the trickle of anger filling your chest.

“I've already said- for your sake. I did it to protect you.”

“How was this supposed to protect me??" She simply pressed her lips together and you knew that you weren’t going to get answer. You tried a different route, “You told him,” You swallowed and tried again, “You told him that I hated him.”

Her face flickered with emotion. “I said what I had to.”

“So you did.”

“...”

“Rose, yo-”

“Yes, I told him that you had no interest in him, and that you were fine on your own. Which you are, trust me.”

“Trust _you_??”

“Trust that this is more complicated than you’re thinking. You don’t need to do this,” Rose put her book down and stood up to walk towards you, her face calm but worried, like she was consoling a wounded animal. You had grown since the last time you had stood so close and you noticed that you were now her same height. It was strange, but as you thought on it, it was also fitting, that you noticed that now. “You don't need to fight my actions. I'm doing this for you. To protect you.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that, but to protect me from what?! Not going a day without feeling like shit? Thanks, I really appreciate it.” Your voice was sharp. Rose flinched, a tiny twitch that anyone else would have missed. “While I’m here, is there anything else you want to tell me?” Rose looked away, her lips set in a hard line, “Anything at all. While you brainstorm, let me give you a few possible topic. Maybe, who my dad is? Where’s that guy, huh? Did you kick him out too? And what about grandparents, out of four grandparents surely there is at least one that’s still alive, how come you never talk about them either? How about you tell me what your job is, or why you’re never at home and where you go when you leave the house on the weekend for hours at a time, or why you have a safe filled with nothing but family pictures?”

Rose snapped her eyes back to yours. “What did you say?”

“No, I’m not answering any question right now, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing,” The fire was burning inside your rib cage, sending caustic sparks dancing through your inflection, making your words twist, “Not that I actually expect it.”

“Dirk, slow down, what did you see in that saf-”

“Of course it’s the safe that capitalize on, out of everything that I just listed!” You take a step back from her as she stepped forward again, feeling your eyes narrow with resentment, “Not my family, or your family, but the safe. The fucking metal box. That really says something about your priorities, doesn’t it?”

Rose’s breath came out in an exasperated, stressed huff, “You know that isn’t true.”

“Do I really?”

“Look,” She took a step closer again, and you took another one back. Her voice was tense. “You’re still so, so young. Seventeen is an age of a child, even if you don’t feel like it now. One day, if you have kids of your own, you’ll understand why I did what I did. You might not agree, but you will understand, and if you could understand that I only did what I had to, I know you could forgive me. If you don’t trust me, at least trust that.”

You closed your eyes and took a breath. You thought what she did to you, how she molded your life around a series of lies, and wondered how that could be validated. Maybe, if you knew that the alternative could be something worse…? Not that you could think of anything worse, couldn’t think of anyway that you would make the same choice, but if there was, didn’t she do the right thing?

Then you thought about what she did to Dave. How she lied to him too.

How he wanted to come home.

The searing fire burning your lungs concentrated in an instant, but instead of burning hotter it burned bright. Bright and warm, like the moment that you step outside on a summer day and the sunshine soaks into your skin and pushes out all the cold. _He wanted to come home._ You thought about Dave. His smile. His letter. The phone call, the poorly concealed hope in his voice when he had asked you if you wanted to see him again, and you knew that even if you could forgive what Rose did to you, you would never forgive Rose for what she had done to Dave.

When you opened your eyes again, the edges of your vision flickered white. Rose had taken a few steps away from you, her mouth hung open slightly and her eyes were panicked, like she had heard what you had been thinking.

She was the one to break the quiet, “Dirk,” her voice was quiet but most intense than you had heard, “I need you to listen to me. You need to take a deep breath and sit down and I’ll give you some space for you to think things over while call a friend of mine who can help up talk this over. He might be able to explain this all better than me and I really, really think you are going to want to listen to him, he can help you understand what’s going on.”

Your plan presented itself to you in an instant. You pretended to think for a moment, nodded your head at her words, “That sounds like a good idea. But instead sitting here can I take a walk instead? Nervous energy.”

Rose tensed, “I don’t see why not, but be careful.”

You turned and left with no more fanfare. You walked out of the front door, down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. The early December air chilled your nose and ears soon. The sky was grey and flat, casting the world in a haze of depressive colors. By the time you were far enough from the house you pulled out your phone and dialed one of the only numbers you had memorized.

Roxy picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, Strider.” She sounded surprised.

“Hey. Are you busy?"

“Not… not really? What’s goin’ on, are you okay?” When you didn’t respond right away her voice became even more concerned, “Dirk, are you okay?”

“I’m fine," For once, you weren't lying, "You remembered how you said I didn’t care about anything?”

“...Yes. Why…?”

“I need a ride. If you can pick me up at the gas station near my house in about fifteen minutes,” about the time it would take to make Rose suspicious of your absence, “I’ll tell you about the one thing that I really care about. It's good, trust me. You might even see me cry. But no promises.”

There was a significant pause on the other end and you became aware of the background noises coming across the line. You felt a small pang when you placed one of the voices as Jane’s. “I can't.” Her voice was stiff.

“Roxy, I really need your help right now.”

“You haven’t even said ‘hey’ in months and now you’re asking for a favor?! This is rich. You are a fuckin’ mess and you had better be real goddamn grateful as all hell that I haven’t already hung up on you.”

“I am, and I only didn't talk to you because I thought you didn't want to talk to me.”

“I don't! Where do you need to be?”

You touched the letter that was in your pocket as if to remind yourself that it was still there. Remind yourself of the address that was neatly printed above the drawing, “I’m going to see my brother.”

“You have a brother?”

“Yeah, please, Rox, I-”

She cut you off with a sigh, “I’ll be there in ten. You shit. If you get there before me buy me a slush.”  


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines day!!! the day gives me a really great excuse to remind you that i love u all. I feel like i'm always talking about this but reading your comments really do light up my day so much. also just i love you all for still thinking homestuck is your kind of shit, because it's really falling off the map for the Cool Kids and it breaks my heart just a little. so literally if you reading this i'm so happy that you exist. Anyways, I stayed up until 2:30 finishing everything up because i really wanted to post today because it's a day of love, and what better way to celebrate love than reading about some sad gay brothers?

If a stranger from the rich part of your suburb had managed to find himself in your neighborhood, he would take in the small houses and metal mailboxes that all somehow leaned slightly to one side or another with a grain of pity. A grain of pity, and large helping of self-satisfaction that at least _he_  wasn't the one living here. Then he would follow the street signs, some of which bent at strange angles from unfortunate encounters with cars that weren't deemed serious enough to fix, until the stranger was back on familiar roads and on track to where he was headed. He would then forget all about those small collection of streets until years later when one of his friends would, in passing, remark “Have you ever seen those houses, right by that park, over past where Linda uses to take the kids swimming?” and the stranger would shake his head slowly, pressing lips together to come across as empathetic and very knowledgeable about the situation before making a thin comment about how the streets impacted his property tax.

Not that your street was trashy or dangerous, but the yards were small and bare, the streetlights dim, and the sidewalks cracked and uneven. Sometimes the sidewalks didn't exist at all, stopping abruptly for a few feet before picking up again which made it difficult to ride bikes (not that Rose ever got you a bike, but Jake had complained to you enough for you to personally feel gypped about it). From your front door, it was only a five minute walk to the gas station that was nestled at the mouth of your street, a junction where residential roads met with a highway. If you moved at a quick pace and cut through the park, you could make it in four. You knew that Roxy, coming from either the school or her much nicer neighborhood, had no hope of getting there before you did but you still hurried; the more space you put between yourself and your mother the easier you could breathe.

You walked with your head down, rarely lifting your eyes from the ground, watching the faint patterns of barely-there shadows that copied the twisting of branches of the old oak trees that were scattered above. You tried to keep your emotions in check, localizing your thoughts in the safety of strictly logical thoughts, but the task proved itself to be almost impossible. Every few steps your mind would snap back to the paper in your pocket and a small, indulgent smile would flicker across your face, followed by a small flutter of excitement and anxiety and elation and stress and wonder, all of which were tangled around the others so fiercely you almost couldn’t distinguish one from the other. You certainly had no clues as to what to do with all them.

Emotions aside, just thinking about your situation critically you had some obstacles. For starters, you had no fucking clue what you were doing. Okay, that wasn't entire true, but your lack of a solid plan was the main source of your unease. When you had walked out your front door a few minutes ago, all you had been thinking about was that you had to get out of that house and you really wanted to see Dave, to talk to him about one specific part of his letter. You hadn't had time to plan the details or decide if it was even a good idea. The uncertainty wasn’t enough to deter you, but more than stressful enough for you to keep the problems rolling in the forefront of your mind until you (hopefully) found solutions.

Problem Number One: Rose. As of right now, she was on a phone call and under the impression that you intended to come home soon. Her call could only take a couple minutes, five tops, and once that was over you would have around ten minutes of her waiting and increasingly anxiously checking her watch before she would nurse the idea that you had gotten the hell out of dodge. Rose seemed strangely intent on you talking to her ‘friend’, whoever that was although your bets were on a therapist, and if she had already invited them over she would act early to get you back home. Her first step could only be calling your phone to see if your absence was intentional or if you were just lost or kidnapped or something. When you didn’t answer (because honestly, what could you say?) what would she do from there? Knowing Rose, she would probably wait. See what you planned to do next. But those were all just your assumptions, based on no real precedents; you had never snuck out of the house before so you had no idea how worried she would be about you and how intent to get you back home. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be very worried at all, but that was just your wishful thinking, seeing as the one thing you didn't require guesswork was that if Rose wanted to find you and bring you home she would find a way.

You pulled your decrepit cell phone out of your pocket and powered it down, on the rare chance that she might try to use your GPS or cell tower triangulation to find you. Of course, now you couldn’t use your phone to check in with Roxy, but you trusted that she would pick you up. And if she didn’t you could always use a phone at the gas station to call a taxi.

You had a fair amount of confidence that Rose wouldn’t call the police as she didn’t trust them with anything past supporting the local donut shops. But if she _did_  contact them a file you as ‘missing’, they would probably think to check the security footage at the gas station. For half a moment you considered how you were going to tackle disabling the cameras with the materials you had access to, but you quickly realized that the whole process would have been useless since whoever was working at the counter would be able to attest that you had been there. Also, you didn’t want to _really_ be in trouble with the police. You let go of the idea of messing with the security cameras with faint disappointment. Maybe some other time.

All that said, everything might be a moot point since you had the suspicion that once Rose realized that you weren’t going home she would know _exactly_  where you were going. You didn’t know if Rose knew where Dave’s apartment was, but odds were in favor that she did, especially if Rose placed the letter on your desk. Which brought you to your problem.

Problem Number Two: If Rose didn’t want you to think well of Dave, why would she allow you to read that letter? She had to have placed it on your desk, since there was no other way it could have gotten there. It wasn’t unlike her to take advantage of your wearing headphones to pull a bit of a prank on you, but slipping you a birthday card could hardly constitute a prank. The letter wasn’t in an envelope or sealed so she must have read over it, and if she had read it and still given it to you knowing that it would contradict her words then she had to have had something up her sleeve. She must know something that you didn't.

Unless Rose had been the one who wrote the letter.

You slowed down your pace until you were at a dead halt, standing in the crisp december air with a sinking dread. It was the only thing that made sense. Rose could have staged a letter to encourage you to seek out Dave, waited for you to do exactly what you were doing now and inevitably get the door slammed in your face, and then played the role of the innocent and caring mother when you ran back to her. It scared you how easily you could see Rose pulling that off.

You pulled the letter out and carefully read it over again, even though you were sure you could recite it. The handwriting was perfectly consistent and fundamentally sloppy, not overwhelmingly so but more like someone with whack handwriting had tried to be legible. The content alluding to things Rose had no way of knowing, and the drawing at the bottom was shitty, sure, but it was shitty in a very unique and specific way. Practiced in a similar style of SBAHJ and somehow inherently artistic. There were no indentions of erased pencil marks on the drawing either, so unless Rose had an artistic side that she's been hiding from you for seventeen years she hadn't been the one to drawn it. You ran your thumb down the edge of the paper slowly as you looked for anything that might betray Rose's involvement and came up empty. No, it had to have been Dave. It had to be. There was no way Rose could have written this. You repeated the thought to yourself as you refolded the note and slid it back into your pocket, as if you were trying to convince yourself. It had to be by Dave because you didn’t know what you were going to do if you were wrong.

So that meant Rose placed a letter from Dave on your desk. For the life of you, you had not a clue in hell why she would even consider the idea of doing that.

You kept walking, and the mystery remained infuriatingly unsolved all the way to the gas station. The quiet tinkling of a bell sounding from somewhere above your head. You nodded to the cashier, recognizing him as the cashier who sometimes gave you discounts for imaginative reasons. When you came back up to the counter with Roxy’s drink, he laughed.

“Why would you get a frozen drink on such a cold day?”

“It’s for my friend. I think she just wants me to have really cold hands while I wait for her.”

“Some friend...”

You paid for Roxy’s drink and went to wait outside, not wanting to miss when she pulled up.

Even one dollar and forty six cents poorer with a large slushie in your freezing hands, Roxy didn’t seem happy to see you. After pulling far too quickly into the parking lot, she rolled into the farthest possible spot from where you were standing in front of the store. A barely inaudible sigh passed your lips. This was going to be a long ride.

You crossed the parking lot reluctantly. You opened the passenger side door when you got to her truck, handing Roxy the slush as some sort of a gate key or peace offering before you pulled yourself into the cab. She accepted the drink, looking at it critically, like you could somehow mess up something as simple as picking up a cup and filling it up with slush from the machine, before looking at you just as critically. You got in the car and strapped yourself in, feeling her eyes on you.

After avoiding eye contact for as long as you could without it seeming intentional, you dragged your gaze over to meet her stare. You were expecting hostility. Resentment. Well-deserved anger for having betrayed her trust and hurt her friends. What you got was something more thoughtful and concerned, her expression having softened in a matter of moments. Your brow creased slightly in confusion. You hadn't a single clue as to what might have triggered the sudden flip in her demeanor, but you weren’t about to question it. “Thanks for doing this.”

She waved a hand dismissively. When she spoke her voice was only a touch off of her normal timbre, “You know me, helpin’ out s’what I do,” She put the truck in reverse and asked “So where to, Mr. Strider?”

“Do you have a GPS so I can plug the address?”

She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen a few times before handing it over to you. You typed in Dave's address from memory slowly, not used to the larger keyboard, before handing it back. She curiously checked out where you were going before making a face.

“Dirk… ugh. Okay. But ugh.”

Something was wrong. You snatched the phone back up as soon as Roxy placed it down and looked at the map as Roxy pulled out of the parking lot, taking a long drink of her slush. You figured out the problem soon enough. Apparently Dave lived on the outskirts of Austin, about an hour away. Great. And you thought this was going to be a long car ride before.

You slowly set the phone back down where Roxy had placed it before looking out the front window. You felt a little guilty that Roxy was going to be driving an hour just to drop you off but it wasn't like you had a shitton of options here, so what was the point in an apology? Maybe you would give her some money for gas. That would ease your conscience.

There were a few minutes of unfortunate silence as you waited for her to start conversation, not sure if she really wanted to talk to you right now. She thankfully didn't leave you waiting for long.

“I’m supposed to workin’ on an Economics project right now.”

“Is that what you were doing when I called?” A nod in response. That explained the background voices. You wanted to ask who she was working with but you had a feeling one of them was Jane which would spiral very quickly into a conversation you wanted to avoid. “What are you doing in Economics?”

“Suffering.” She over-pronounced every sound in the word to give it the weight she probably felt it deserved.

“...I didn’t cover that unit.”

Roxy threw you a look that was split somewhere in the middle of annoyance and amusement, “I bet you didn’t, with your fancy online classes. Those things skip all the hard shit.”

“And how would you know? I thought you hadn’t taken any online classes.”

“I’ve got my people.” She looked smug so you let it be. She was right anyways, “Sadly ‘my people’ don’t know much ‘bout what’s been goin’ on in your life for the past few eons, since you’ve been dead set on being M.I.A.”

“Honestly, there’s nothing to share.”

“But ya’ graduated, yeah?”

“Mm. Few weeks ago.”

Roxy took a hand off the wheel and reached over to mess up your hair with a smile, “Look at you, my lil’ baby Dirk, all grown up. I’m so proud.”

You shoved her hand away with a small grin, “Keep your eyes on the road, Roxy, Jesus. I can’t believe you rubbed your high-school-student hands all over my adult hair. Know your place, you child.” You reached up mess your hair back to how you liked it, not that you had taken the time to fix it this morning and- ahh, Christ. You were going to show up at Dave’s apartment with your hair looking like garbage. Great.

You were barely listening to Roxy’s protests that she was a year older and could do whatever she damn well pleased to your hair, distractedly suddenly aware of how little thought you had put into how you looked before you left the house. You had just thrown on a faded t-shirt and jeans. You weren’t even completely sure the jeans that you were wearing were clean. “Shit,” You muttered under your breath, flipping down the mirror in efforts to maybe convince your hair to be semi-decent, since that was really the only thing you could control at this point.

You were aware of Roxy glancing over to see what you were doing. After a few moments she said, “Dude, your hair looks fine, chill.”

“Right.” Heavy on the skepticism, “If by ‘fine’ you mean ‘fucking horrendous in every conceivable aspect’, then I give my wholehearted agreement.”

“Pff, nah,” Roxy shrugged, “The wilder the better. Curls are in.”

“But I don’t have curls,” Although now you wondered if you hair could curl some if you grew it out. It certainly wouldn’t be straight, that’s for sure. Not that you had any business growing out your hair, you couldn’t even tame it as short as it was. You pushed the mirror back up and slumped in your seat in defeat, “Shirley Temple had curls, I have… a mess.”

“A hot mess.” She corrected.

You narrowed your eyes at her half heartedly, wondering if she was mocking you. “That. Doesn't mean what you want it to.”

“Why do ya’ even care though? You ain’t goin’ to a photoshoot for Out magazine, you’re goin’ to your bro’s apartment, like,” She waved her hand and scoffed, as if that proved her point, “I’m sure he won't even notice.”

Your nerves twisted. Fuck, you were going to Dave’s apartment. You let yourself entertain her dig to distract yourself. “Wow, thanks Rox, I kiss one dude and you’re breaking out the gay jokes. It just had to be Out. Couldn't have pick Vouge or Time or… Better Homes and Gardens.”

“Does it matter, I just said you _weren’t_  going there.”

You were too worried to argue with that.

You spent the next ten minutes passing simple conversations back and forth. How was senior year going? Any plans for Christmas break? When the subject of Jake and Jane was eventually hesitantly mentioned by you at the point where not addressing the issue would have been more awkward than just suffering through, Roxy quickly assured you that Jane was over the whole thing but didn’t think of you exceptionally highly anymore. No surprise there. But she didn’t mention Jake. You didn’t want to think about the implications and changed the topic with a sinking heart. You still didn’t have any regrets but you sure as hell hoped Jake was okay.

The two of you talked for a few minutes longer before Roxy shuffled over to the proverbial elephant in the car and poked it with her toe, “By the way, I know you’ve never mentioned a brother before, is this like a blood brother? Or did you join a frat or a street gang or something?”

“Uh, no. He’s. My real brother.”

“Huh,” She picked up her drink again and took a long pull from the plastic pink straw. The slush was mostly gone at this point and the sound of slurping filled the cab. “I’m guessing he’s older, since we’re gong to his apartment.”

“Yeah. He’s…” You did the math quickly in your head and slowly spoke the answer, knowing it was right but unsure how Roxy would react, knowing the number was about a decade higher than she expected, “Thirty-five.”

Roxy’s eyes went wide in surprize. She glanced at you, “Thirty-five? But Rose looks as old as my mom, how does she have a thirty-five year old?”

“A pro of teen pregnancy?”

“Guess so,” She thought about that, taking another obnoxious slurp, “Man, if I want to be the Hot Mom when I grow up I’m gonna have to get knocked up here pretty soon, I’m pushin’ out of my teen years.”

The Hot Mom? “Are you calling my mother hot?”

“Dude, yeah.”

You made a face, “Roxy, Jesus. Ew, stop. She’s my _mother_. Also she's like, fifty. Gross.”

“Fifty?”

You furrowed your eyebrows. Rose’s age wasn’t something you kept up with and wasn’t something she mentioned often, “Yeah, I think she's forty-nine?” Rose’s lips moved silently for a few moments and you knew she was doing the math in her head. You shifted in your seat, arriving at the answer before her and knowing it wasn’t a good one, “Maybe she’s more like fifty-two. She’s probably no-”

“ _Fourteen_!?”

“I really think she mig-”

“Shit, fourteen! I ain't even kissed a guy ‘til I was sixteen, sweet holy Jesus, I bet she always lost Never Have I Ever. Dang,” Roxy blew out an impressed puff of air, “No wonder she drinks so much,” You didn’t even get a chance to be offended because she immediately followed up with another question that caught you off-guard, “Hey! Speakin’ of alcohol, does your brother buy you booze?”

“Uh. No.”

“Are you kidding?! C’mon dude, you could talk an art major into buyin’ you a nice ass yacht, utilize your your assets here. If I had a sibling over twenty-one I would go to their apartment like every week to get my crunk on. At _least_. What’s the point of havin' a grownup as a sibling if they don’t buy ya’ booze?”

You shifted uncomfortably, “He doesn’t buy me anything, really.”

“What the heck, why not? Not even on holidays n’ shit?”

Roxy was already breaking the surface on your shitty little family, you might as well just get everything out on the table. “I think it’s understandable, seeing as I’ve been face to face with him for about twenty minutes total, exempting the first two years of my life,” You shrug your shoulders like you don’t care, “It’s why I’ve never talked to you about him.”

Roxy kept her eyes straight ahead but you could see her demeanor shift, her shoulders falling slightly. After a short pause, “Oh. Can I ask why?”

“Rose,” you looked down at your hands, feeling a soft calm for being able to talk about this for the first time in your life without frustration or crushing hurt, “She pulled this ridiculous notion out of her ass that Dave shouldn’t hang around any more and showed him the door. And then she locked the door and nailed boards across it and then set the area outside the door on fire.”

“But you’re going to see him now,” She considered it for a moment, then added, “And Rose doesn’t know, which was why you needed me to give you a ride.”

You nodded slowly and hummed, “Mmhm”.

“...Are you sure about doin’ this?”

“Mostly? I’m sure that I need to talk to him but I’m not sure if he wants to talk to me. He probably does but I’m just...”

“Nervous.” She finished easily.

“Holy shit. Yes.”

Quiet fell over the car again as she thought. You looked out your window, thankful that she wasn't pushing the subject further.

“I so badly wanted to be mad at’cha today,” She said a few minutes later, sounding distantly thoughtful, “I wanted to huff and puff the entire time you were here, and when I dropped you off I lay down some drop-mic one-liner ‘bout you being a malicious, heartless asshole. I was ready to do that. Even with your promise to tell me all the hot gossip on whatever you cared about, which, side note, I can guess the answer at this point. But even with the promise of that, I was curious, sure, but I was mostly here to make ya feel like shit.”

“I’m touched, thank you.”

“Anythin’ for you, Babe,” Roxy’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, only there to supplement the joke, “But, when I actually got here, and you was all hunched shoulders and you lookin’ like someone had just make you put down your dog, I had never seen you…” Roxy made a face, like she couldn't find the right word, “You had never looked so, I dunno. Human. ‘TLDR’-”

“Rox, this is a verbal conversa-”

“‘TLDR’,” She repeated forcefully, “I think you're doing the right thing.” You waited for her to clarity but she seemed to have no intentions of doing so, diverting the subject in the same breath, “Am I right though?”

“Probably, but what are you asking about this time.”

“Can I guess the answer about what you care about most?”

“It’s Dave.”

“Yeah, ok. Cool. That was... gonna be my guess. I was tryin’ to be mysterious and suave about it but it’s whatever, we can just out-right say shit, it don’t matter to me. Delicacy is a thing of the past, I get it, geeze.”

You threw her a grin that you knew she caught, because a few seconds later she let out a quiet laugh of her own.

“But I have to ask,” Roxy spoke slowly, carefully, “Dave is really important you but... you’ve barely spoken?”

“...Yes,” You said when Roxy didn't seem like she was going to finish her thought without the first half being confirmed.

“...So?” Her voice was prompting, “What's up with that?”

You felt your eyebrows pull down in confusion, “Wait, what is your question?”

“How come ya’ value Dave so much if you’ve barely talked, and if your mom, at some point whenever, felt vindicated to kick ‘em out?”

“I...He’s my brother.”

“Well, _yes, but_ ,” Roxy tilted her head slightly to the side as she spoke, flexing her fingers against the wheel, and sounding vaguely like she was talking to a child, “That doesn't change the fact that you don't know him.”

You opened your mouth, intending to brush aside the inane claim easily as flicking off a bug, but no words would come. It wasn't that you didn't know the answer. You knew the answer, which was that she was wrong. But you felt like you were trying to put into words what it felt like to have blood run through your veins. You knew Dave and you knew that you knew Dave, but finding a way to tell that to Roxy was going to be a feat of pure ingenuity.

A few beats of silence passed where you were still thinking before Roxy’s voice exploded in a shout of-

“HOLY MOTHER!”

Your seatbelt was the only thing keeping you from jumping into Earth’s orbit at the sudden noise. You half wheezed a short string of profanities while you assessed that, yes, you were still alive and no, Roxy hadn't crashed.

“DAVE STRIDER! _Your brother is Dave Strider!?_ ” Roxy’s wide, incredulous eyes were fighting between watching the road and watching you. Her fingers were clutching the wheel so tight her knuckles turned slightly pale.

“The one and only,” Your voice was strained and you closed your eyes, pressing your palms down against the seat, only half convinced your heart wasn’t about to give out. Dammit, Roxy. Why did she have to yell so loudly so unexpectedly while driving as fast down the freeway. Why. You had just lost three years of your life.

“That’s un-fuckin-real! What? Are you bullshittin’ me?! Dave Strider?! Ha! I knew he lived in Texas but I never even put together- I’d always just heard his name like one sound, ya’ know, like a brand or… not like a _name_ , like a _first_  name and then a _last_  name, which happen’ to also be my friend’s last na- but he’s your _brother_? Dave Strider? Renowned Hollywood writer, director Dave Strider is your actual, biological brother and you’re actually related to him?”

“The more important question right now is am I having a heart attack?”

She flat out ignored you. “Jesus, I can totally see the resemblance like what the fuck, I could fix your hair, put you in shades and charge people for autographs.”

“Please don't d-”

“And I’m drivin’ to his apartment! I’ve got his address in my phone!” Roxy let out a short slightly panicked laugh, “This is the best day in my entire life. Everything I have done has led up to this moment. Right now. Holy shit. Hooooly shiiit. Dave Strider. Oh my god, I am friends with Dave Strider’s brother.”

You wanted to tell roll your eyes and tell Roxy to calm down and shut up. To play it cool and be the ‘yeah, he’s famous, no big deal’ kind of guy. But honestly, you couldn’t hide your smile or deny the fact that you were just as amazed by your connection to him as she was, if for incredibly different reasons. Also she had just called you her ‘friend’, and so you weren’t about to start being an ass.

The rest of the drive was only speckled with sporadic remarks, Roxy too enthralled with the surrealism of the situation and you increasingly too nervous to carry any real dialogue. By the time Roxy pulled up the the building- nothing too fancy by the looks of it but maybe leaning on the higher end of middle class- your nervousness was borderlining nausea. You couldn't get your eyes to linger on the building for long. Every time you put too much thought into walking through those doors you felt like wimping out, so instead you pulled out your wallet and threw a folded ten at your driver as casually as you could, “For gas. And your Economic’s grade.”

She tossed it back, “Nah, it’s whatever dude. Consider this whole thing your birthday gift.”

...Oh. She had remembered that today was your birthday. Even though you wanted to turn the offer down, you found yourself picking up the bill from where it had landed on the armrest. You told yourself that it was because you were always in want of cash and would have to be stupid to turn down free money, and had nothing to do with Roxy’s senseless and flippant declaration of this being a birthday present. That would be dumb.

But you still wanted a way to thank her for the ride. And for listening to you, and for somehow not being angry, and for everything she had done for you since she had taken you under her wing. But what could you give that she didn’t already have? Just saying the words ‘thank you’ didn't seem nearly adequate enough to pay her back from all the hundreds of times she has shown you forgiveness you didn’t deserve and for all the small smiles that made you think that maybe you weren’t as terrible of a person as you believed, and for introducing you to the only friends you had ever had. A strange sort of guilt was seeping into your system and you swore to yourself that someday you would do something for Roxy to pay her back for not only this but for all the kindness she had ever shown you.

Roxy gave you a little shove, “Now get outta my truck. I can’t stay parked in front of the door forever, people will start to honk.”

Your expression must have been more panicked than you thought when you looked at her and asked, “Won’t you come inside with me?” because she softened her voice and gave you an encouraging little grin.

“Nah, I’d just be in the way. Imma stay in the area though. I’m thinkin’ about grabin’ some lunch at that Arby's we passed. I can hear the curly fries singing their siren’s song. Mmm. But if you need anything or you gotta gtfo for whatever reason just hit me up. Kay? I’ll stick around for an hour or so.”

“Okay. I can’t call from my phone right now though so watch for an unknown number.”

“Gotcha’. Now go get ‘em, Shirley Temple.” She shoved you again, a little more aggressively. You grumbled but climbed out of the cab all the same.

After watching Roxy’s truck pull away, you shoved your hands in your pockets and slowly turned around the face the doors. You breathed in. You could do this. Your fingertips traced the folded edges of the letter in your pocket that was absolutely no way in hell from Rose. Yeah. Dave was going to be glad to see you, he wouldn't be angry or upset or dismissive, you were sure everything would be fine. Or, worse case scenario, you get the door slammed in your face and your heart shatters into a million, anguished fragments. But that definitely, probably, possibly wouldn’t happen. Hopefully. Ugh.

You moved to the doors, pulled them open and stepped inside.

The lobby wasn’t at all what you were expecting. There was a modest sitting area, a few fake potted plants… you had imagined a little bit more grandeur and elegance, considering Dave’s income and what you knew he could afford, but then again, maybe Dave picked a nondescript place like this to avoid public disclosure of his home and to feel normal for at least part of his day. That’s what you would want to do if you were famous.

You sat down in one of the empty couches and collected your thoughts. You weren’t stalling, you were strategizing. You _weren’t_  stalling.

Okay, goal- you were here to talk to Dave and you weren’t going to leave until you had. Given the choice between talking here, in the lobby, where it was safe and there was always an out, or talk in apartment 1402, you would gladly take the former. Sure, it would be incredible to go into Dave’s apartment and get a glimpse of his life past what you had gathered through the insincere lens of a camera but regardless of how insatiable your curiosity you knew you shouldn’t sacrifice your safety to appease it.

You were seventy five percent sure that Dave would be okay with you having a short chat, based on what he’s said in the past, twenty percent sure that if he didn’t want you here he would tell you kindly. But that missing five percent forced you to pause, as you knew that if he so much as raised his voice it would rip you in half. Dave could talk as loud and malicious as he pleased in the privacy of his home, but Dave couldn’t act out in the lobby. You could use his fame and the smartphone cameras at everyone's fingertips to restrict his actions; he had to be civil and kind to you if everyone in the world was watching.

But could you achieve that? Could you get Dave down to the lobby? You begun been brainstorming up an option that would allow you to know if Dave wanted to see you without directly asking him. A way to put the ball in his court. That way, _if_ the letter had been from Rose to set you up to for rejection (because how else would it have ended up on your desk?), you wouldn’t have to see his face and hear his voice when he told you that he didn’t want anything to do with you. That would be a difficult memory to override.

If only you had kept Dave's agent’s number, you could just call him. Ugh that would be so much cleaner, why had you allowed that card to fade so horrifically?

Your eyes were drawn to the ‘Help Desk’ because, by God, could you appreciate some help right about now. Maybe you could try to send a message to his room, either through that help desk or by using the money you had left to bribe someone either very kind or very broke to run up to his floor. But you couldn’t be sure of the wording if someone else gave the message, and the clock on the wall told you that it was late enough to be out on an early lunch, so you couldn’t be sure if he would even get the message if it was sent to his door. And what if he simply couldn’t come down because he was too busy, and not because he didn’t want to see you?

There were too many variables and too many unknowns and you had too much to lose. Begrudgingly, you resigned yourself over to just showing up on his doorstep and letting things play out. It was so crude and pedantic and the prospect of having absolutely zero control over the situation did nothing to sooth your nerves. You watched a few children scramble out of an elevator, giggling and excited to be wherever they were off to, before you pulled yourself to your feet and walked over to the metal doors. They were near enough that you could slip in before the doors shut.

The doors closed with a soft ding. Before you could talk yourself out of everything, you pressed the ‘14' button so that it glowed and the elevator whirred to life around you.

Your eyes remained firmly on the numbers on the little LED screen as they slowly climbed from one to two, from two to three, three to four, to five, to six…

It would be smart to plan a speech. You didn't want to get there and not know what to say, or worse, blurt out something that comes across wrong. But your thoughts were buzzing too quickly for you to focus on one idea enough to develop it into words. By the time the small LED number showed a bright red ‘fourteen’, you still weren’t any closer to knowing how you wanted to start.

The doors opened lazily with the dry, two-tone ding. You felt your nervousness swell higher but refused to acknowledge it, determinedly stepping onto the floor and starting down the hall.

Following the small numbers marking each unit, you found the door marked ‘1402’ quickly enough. The amount of time you spent in front of the door with you hands in you pockets, mouth pressed in an apprehensive line, brainstorming what to say was far more considerable. It dwarfed the time you spent actually _locating_  the door in an embarrassing ratio.

After a few moments of careful thought, you had a good number of solid lines pieced together and had rolled them through your head a enough times that you felt they would do their job, and that you wouldn't stumble your way through them. You raised a hand to knock, dropped it back down to your side, raised it again, flexed your fingers, dropped your hand a second time and took a few steps back away from the door, feeling very pathetic and very sick.

 

Okay, get a grip. You had to do this. You _wanted_  to do this, or else you wouldn't have come. Your fingers found the letter in your pocket. You had to talk to Dave and tell him that you were sorry and that he was wonderful and he didn't need to think that you thought of him as anything less than perfect.

The three quick raps against the door rang in your ears like gunshots.

Your shallow breathing was the only sound for a few moments, and then the soft, muffled sound of footsteps, a lock turning, and then the door was opening and you couldn't do this why did you think you could do this oh my god-

“Holy shit. Hey.”

It honestly amazed you how quickly your brain clicked completely off. One second, you were a perfectly functioning human being with an objective to achieve, and the next you felt like a very panicked goldfish possessing a teenaged boy. Your heartbeat jumped to the back of your dry throat and you realized in about half of one billionth of a second that you should have never come here and everything in your life had been one gigantic fuckup of ungodly proportions and if you weren't completely frozen you would have turned on your heels and marched the fuck away to literally anywhere else on the planet because Dave fucking Strider was standing _right there_.

You could feel his surprise and discomfort from where you stood although he hid it well, pulling the door further open and leaning his shoulder against the door frame casually, like you were a girl scout here to pass over some thin mints or a neighbor here to talk about borrowing some flour and not his kid brother who he hadn't seen in nearly four years. Not that he showed a day of it, looking identical to the last time you had seen him. He even had on those shades, even though there no excuse to be wearing them inside. As far as you could tell the only thing they were accomplishing was setting you even further on edge. Somehow, regardless of this fact, you still managed to gather all your panic into a box and slam the lid, leaving you mostly uneasy and pretty overwhelmingly queasy but at least you didn't feel like you were seconds away from passing out. You inhaled deeply and pulled yourself up just a little taller, calling on confidence you didn't have to recite your lines that you were now beyond infinitely glad you had prepared.

“Hi. I really hate to show up unannounced like this but I got your letter and I need to talk to you about it. If you don’t want me to be here just say the word and I’ll go, and if you're busy I can come back another time, but it has to be sometime today.”

He seemed to think for a moment before he shrugged the shoulder not pressed against the door frame, “Nah, now's fine." He didn't raise contradictions to the mention of his letter. You already knew somehow that it had been written by him and not Rose, but the confirmation solidified the mystery of how the hell the letter reached your desk. However that would have to be a problem for a different day.

More urgent was the confirmation that Dave, under the influence of whatever lies Rose had convoluted his thoughts with, honestly believed that you disliked him and wanted him to leave you alone. The knot of guilt that had been in your gut since this morning intensified, as did the urge to correct the catastrophic inaccuracy as soon as you could.

You waited for Dave to step aside so you could resume your conversation inside but he didn't move. You glanced down the hall briefly, “Like now, as in right now, in this hallway?”

“Um,” He rocked his weight, “Did you, uh. Wanna come in?” His voice sounded unsure, like he was genuinely confused and not posing a courtesy.

“...Not if you aren't okay with it, I’m fine talking in the hall.”

He quickly nudged the door further open and stood up proper. “No, it's cool.” He stepped back and held the door wide open, “Step inside, welcome, have a seat, make yourself at home, mi casa es su casa, etcetera etcetera.”

After a slight hesitation to gauge his sincerity you stepped past him and into the unit. You had only walked a few steps inside before you stopped, caught off-guard by how _normal_  the place looked. There was a faded black couch and a matching chair placed in front of a flat screen television, a few CD and DVD cases and other misplaced items littering the area. The kitchen directly to your right didn’t seem like it was used to actually prepare or serve food. It was presented more like an office, and you thought it was one at first glance. Most of the counter space was filled with used notebooks, mail, small stacks of papers, large stacks of paper and a box full of… something (action figures? dolls? Weird.). All the walls you could see, including the hallway branching left and right from the living room, were painted a soft, almost white grey, probably the color they had been when he moved in.

It was… nice. Cozy. Disarmingly charming. You would have no problem seeing someone living here but that fact that that someone was your Dave made the place feel as surreal as a castle in the clouds. You knew that he had to have a home somewhere, but actually being inside it transcended the information from a concept to a reality in a way that was low-key blowing your mind.

Dave tossed his keys on the counter. They landed with a sharp clink that drew your attention. Everything he did drew your attention. “I would say that I would’ve have cleaned up in I knew you were dropping by but the sad truth is that would be a shamless, bald-faced lie and the devil already has me on his shit-list.”

You glanced over your shoulder with an honest, “I don’t mind”. This wasn’t even that messy, compared to your own living room, and to be quite honest you wouldn’t have minded if he lived at a sewage treatment plant. You walked a few more paces into the living room, slowly turning around to take everything in. Even after seeing the rest of the building first you had half expected a penthouse suite complete with voice activated lights and heated floors. Sure, the place was probably leaning to the upper half of middle class but not nearly as far as you would have guessed. Once again, Dave had surprised you.

Your nerves were still coiled tight but with every moment that ticked by without Dave raising any hints that he was going to be hostile you felt your nerves and anxiety subside so slightly and so, so slowly edged out to make room for wonder. Your legs carried you deeper into the room. Maybe you were trying to delay the conversation that you knew was coming so that you could build up some courage or maybe you were simply seizing the opportunity to take a look around Dave’s place.  
Even though his eyes were obscured by his shades you knew they were following your movements as you explored his living room. The knowledge gnawed at your stomach and made you feel like you were being judged under strict scrutiny, but you forced yourself to deal with it knowing that you had been the one staring at Dave for years and turning the tables now was only fair, regardless of how unnerving it was. You skimmed the contents scattered across the coffee table, wanting to sit down and thoroughly examine everything you saw. There were a number of remotes, a few short stacks of disks, and a macbook that was turned off but half opened and resting on top of a large, official-looking book about dinosaurs.

“This is weirder than I thought it would be,” Dave’s guarded and slow words echoed your thoughts.

Your gaze slipped away from the spine of the dinosaur book to Dave leaning against the kitchen counter, then quickly over to one of the pictures on the wall. It was a photograph of a finch sitting in a branch. Maybe he ordered it from National Geographic. Although you already knew the answer you asked anyways,“What is?”

There were surround sound speakers mounted on the walls above the pictures. “You being here. I dunno. Not weird in a bad way, just. Weird.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No, God no, stay,” The words came a touch too fast. You looked back at him and this time your gaze held, “I mean, you still haven't said what you came here to tell me. I’m not gonna send you into the cold without first serving as your rapt audience, I owe you at least that much.”

So once you said your lines this was over. Better to get it done with quick and leave before you got comfortable. Before you let your mind run away from you, and let yourself believe that his kindness was sincere or extended past civility. “First things first, Rose told me that she kicked you out.”

His face instantly adopted a smug grin at the news, “Yeah? So did I. Like, four years ago.” Before you could offer any mumbled apologies he waved his hand dismissively, “It’s okay, I wouldn't have listened to me either.”

“I wish I had listened to you. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, same here. But rather late than never I guess. I’m gonna be honest for a moment here though, I’m having trouble envisioning any sort of scenario where Rose would admit that to you at all,” He did seem to be a little wrapped in his thoughts, “Was that all that she told you? She didn’t happen to lay down any other surprising fun facts?”

Every time Dave spoke you wanted to close your eyes and drown in the sound. It was hard for you to keep up the conversation when you almost forgot what you had said every time he replied, but you were trying your best, “Um. Not really, no.”

“So she didn't mention why.”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Dave let out a quiet, humorless laugh, muttering something too quiet for you to hear, although you were inclined to think it was some kind of complaint. “Sure, kiddo. Some other time.”

“Why not now?”

“Maybe I happen to know that now isn't a good time to drop that sort of information.”

“Maybe,” you kept your expression and inflection guarded, “Or maybe you're just saying ‘later’ because you never plan on telling me, which is easily understandable since you're spilling dirt on yourself and who would be jumping at that opportunity.”

He leaned slightly away at that, stood up a little straighter, almost as if he was taken about, before he gave the tiniest of smiles. Just to make sure you knew his next words were aimed as a joke, “Wow, ice cold. Do you always assume the worst in people do I qualify as a special circumstance?”

“Both,” you admitted truthfully, “If that’s ‘assuming the worst’ you should clear your name by telling me the real reason, since I’m going to believe my explanation until you offer up a better one.”

“Maybe I’m trying to give you an excuse to come back.”

“...That wasn't a better explanation.”

Dave simply slowly shook his head, as if he couldn't believe that you were doubting him.

You went back to studying the photograph of the finch, this time with your eyebrows pulled down . _You_  almost couldn't believe you were doubting him, but at the same time you knew you had to. You had to force yourself to ignore the hints of emotion in his voice, because if you really believed that Dave wanted you to stay or come back again you’d probably try. And you couldn't, it just couldn't happen. Your luck had go run out at some point, there had to be a catch, if not now then further down the road. Which would lead to more bitterness and troubles and you literally just pulled yourself out of that mess. Your connection to Dave had been untainted for only a number of hours you could count on one hand, why would you set yourself up for that to be ruined?

Besides, there was no way that you could just… casually spent time with _Dave_ , there was no way a universe existed in which that was possible. You could never be that lucky. Especially considering how opposed Rose was to all things related to your brother.

Although, you slowly realised, Rose didn’t have to allow it. She didn't even need to know you were in communication. Transportation wasn’t an obstacle since Roxy seemed okay with being your driver and Dave had already made the trip at least twice himself. And if Dave _wanted_ to see you he could always send a cab to pick you up. You could claim to Rose that you were spending time with Roxy (you knew Roxy would cover you) but then slip away to meet up with Dave and spend the weekend together, and Rose would never be wis-

No nonono _no, stop_. Stop hoping this could actually happen! It wasn’t how things _worked_. This whole ordeal had to be a one time thing. It was enough that he didn’t walk out willingly all those years ago, Dirk, it was _enough, let it be enough._

You stared blankly at the next picture, another photograph of some bird you didn't know the name of.

“Did you come here just to say that or is there more?”

“There's... more.”

“So, what is it?” He pushed off the counter and walked into the living room with you, having the nerve to sound the faintest hint of excited, as if he couldn't believe he could have _two_  topics to discuss with you, wow _two things_.

The thought of Dave being excited to talk to you made absolutely no sense in your mind but judging by the small amount of warmth that bloomed in your chest at least part of you seemed pretty on board with the idea. You guessed you felt excited to keep talking to him too, in a way. Well, maybe excited wasn't the best word for it. You were more ‘wired'. The kind of excitement that replaced joy with anxiety and enthusiasm with nervousness and made you hyper aware of everything and also made you feel a little bit like running out of the room as fast as you could.

“Give me a moment, it's a little heavy,” Mostly you just wanted a moment to calm down and collect your thoughts. You really weren't very good at talking about any subject and you imagined that even a professional public speaker would have trouble talking about this eloquently. Did you start by saying you liked his letter? And kind of ease into the topic? Or should you just jump into the thick of things and open with ‘You were wrong in your letter about me not liking you, I fucking adore you and every day of my life I wish I could see you’, or would that be off-putting? Probably that would be at least a little strange, yeah. Maybe you should understate the parts about… everything. Also it seemed best to just entirely leave out the part about how you might have a bit of an emotional dependency on him. How would you even go about dropping that kind of information? ‘By the way, sometimes I can't go to sleep without looking at your pictures haha oh, and also I’ve memorized all your interviews because I’ve watched them all hundreds of times hahahahaha.’

Okay, yeah, you weren't going to mention it, that would be weird as all fuck, do not let that slip out.

Enough time had passed that it would be weird not to say something but you were still just as clueless as to what you could possibly say, so you stalled for a little more time by interjecting, “By the way, I hope I’m not ruining your plans by forcing you to stay at home for a few minutes longer. Where were you going?”

He seemed taken aback, “What makes you think that I was going somewhere?”

“I mean. It's lunchtime. Your kitchen obviously isn't being used to cook, so you would have to either have to go out or order in. And since it’s your birthday and you’re dressed up nice enough to go somewhere expensive, odds are not in favor of ordering in,” You could have just stopped there but you kept going, “Also your keys were in your pocket when you answered the door but then you put them on the counter when you thought I was going to stay here a while. It doesn't take much to put two and two together.”

Dave’s eyebrows pulled together. He looked down at his own clothes, literally an outfit that could be worn to a five star restaurant and said, “I'm not dressed up nice.”

You blinked, “You're wearing slacks.”

“These are Pronto Uomo.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means ‘cheap shit’. Latin.” When you raised an eyebrow he pretended to sigh in defeat, “You got me, it’s actually a direct translation of ‘I wasn't going anywhere important so who cares’.”

You wanted to ask how he could possibly think that the brand of his slacks diminished their formality but you were already off-subject as it were and you had heard enough to know that you had read things correctly, “Ah, but you _were_  going somewhere. I'm just saying sorry that I’m wasting so much of your time.”

“I do not accept your apology on the grounds that it's dumb.”

“Excuse me?”

“It's dumb,” He repeated, “There's nothing to be sorry for, I would gladly wait here all week and let you ‘waste my time’,” He actually made the air quotes with both his hands, as if he couldn't place emphasis on how ridiculous the idea was. He then pointedly sat down in the black chair, making a big show about getting comfortable, as if he planned on being there for hours. Right. Well then.

You were too riled up to follow his lead and sit down in any of the open seats, opting instead to move away from him and over to the last picture you hadn't yet examined. You took your time, staring blankly at the image (another bird. You made a note about Dave liking birds with the same self-satisfaction whenever you learned anything new about him) while you thought. When you finally opened your mouth, you directed your words to the photograph.

“I’m not exactly sure how to start.”

“Why not with how you feel about all this?”

As good a place as any, “Right now mostly stunned that you're real. That this place is real, and that I’m anywhere without Rose knowing, let alone _here_. Can you believe that I’m seventeen years old and this is only the second time in my life that my mom doesn't know exactly where I am?"

"Doesn't she?" His voice was quiet and dry. Like he knew something you didn't. You swallowed.

“I’m sure she has her guesses, there’s only a few places I would go.”

“Kid, she knows you're here,” The confidence in his voice inclined you to turn to look at him, narrowing your eyes every so slight with a sinking feeling of dread when you saw he seemed absolutely serious, “And if she doesn't know yet, she will soon.”

“There's no way you could possibly know that.”

“I know Rose.”

“So do I, she's my mother.”

Dave drew a long, slow breath through his nose and exhaled it in a puff, “Yeah, I know. Sorry, keep going.”

You pressed your mouth in a worried line, wanting to ask what Dave thought he knew that you didn't, but at the same time you were not keen on the prospect of losing courage or getting distracted. Right now, all the frayed ends of the your emotions concerning the man before you were mostly wrapped up and sealed tight under the pressure of your focus to get out what you came here to say, but you didn't know how long that would hold. It was already slipping, the hints of something suspiciously close to contentment slowly replace your ever present longing, and if that wasn't dangerous you didn't know what was.

“Nah, don't be sorry. Actually you’re probably right. Now that I think about it, it's very likely that I don't know anything about Rose at all. I thought I understood how she worked but this morning she said things that contradicted what I thought were fundamental aspects of her character, so obviously the person I built her to be in my head only exists in my delusional imagination.” As soon as you said it you realised something strangely interesting, “I kind of did the same thing to you. My idea of who you were was split up in two parts. Not like I thought you had two sides but I literally had invented two different Daves.”

Dave seemed slightly amused by that, his mouth twitching with the traces of an smile so faint you knew it wasn’t meant for you to see. “Two of me?”

“Yeah. Because I wanted to like you but I couldn't just overlook that I thought you had done. So it was easiest for me to have one Dave that I, uh, really liked and found comfort in and thought of as my brother. And then the other Dave that was, well. You.”

The implications of your words didn't hit you until Dave stiffened, dropping all hints of humor. The change was as understated as anything and you had no explanation for how you picked up on it from all the way across the room, but you could have sworn that it was there all the same. It was incredible how just that smallest movement conveyed so much. Your gut jolted as you realised you had accidentally kind of confirmed what you had come here to refute and you hastily added on, “Wait not _you_  but the person I thought you were. The person I thought had tossed away a family that needed him and then never even bothered to drop us a phone call or an email. It was the easiest thing in the world to dislike that Dave because almost everything he did hurt. Like whenever I saw you or talked to you it just reminded me of what you had done. And even though you were always nice to me that just made it worse to deal l because my choices were to either accept that I was missing out on having this really great guy in my life or to believe that you were somehow playing me for some ulterior motive and both ideas fucking sucked. But, uh,” You picked your next few words carefully, “I still _wanted_ to like you. I really, really wanted to like you. And for whatever self-deprecating reason my subconscious decided to latch onto that as a cornerstone so I never accepted that you were the bad person Rose said you were. But that was really hard to do when every time I saw you I just had this huge reminder that you screwed up and left, so of course I avoided you. And I never really intended for it to come across as hostility but I can totally see how it was received as such, in retrospect.” Especially the time you had slammed his car door shut after some choice words, no fucking wonder he thought you didn’t like him, wow, great work. You were literally the scum of the earth. “Anyways, this morning I was told that the Dave I didn’t like doesn't even exist. Just like the Rose I thought I knew doesn't exist either. Which sounds pretty melodramatic, but that's how it… how it seems to me. Uh,” You swallowed, “I think I never realised that you weren't actually cruel because I interpreted all your words instead of actually hearing them, if that makes any sense to you, and, as I’ve already said, I never wanted to think about the real you too much anyways because it only just reopened old wounds, but if I had actually stopped to think things through I feel like I might have been able to figure all this out on my own because you really have been so nice to me. Although maybe not.”

You were starting to get anxious with how poorly you were presenting this and how _much_  you were presenting. Not just in terms of importance but also is the sheer amount you were saying. You hadn't done this much speaking since… well since you last prattled on to Dave's photographs about dumb shit for hours. Funny how these things turn out. So funny. Everyone's laughing.

“...Are you following this?” You eventually asked, hoping to prompt him into saying something to alleviate some of the weight of this off your shoulders.

“Yeah.”

Not exactly the helpful intervention that you were aiming for. Deep breath.

“Okay, look,” You took a step closer to his chair so you were standing mostly in the middle of the room. You felt a bit like a jester in a court of just one king, with Dave sitting down and watching you as intently as he was, “In short- I don't hate you. I don't even remotely dislike you. At all. And I couldn’t stand the idea that you thought I did because you don't deserve that, so I came here to clear the air and to say that I’m sorry for being rude to you and I’m sorry that I didn't listen to you before and I’m sorry for whatever lies Rose told you about me not wanting you around because they couldn't be less true.”

You hoped he was planning to launch into a poetic and thoughtful response but Dave just clicked his tongue quietly and said, “Huh.”

You flexed your fingers by your sides anxiously.

“Huh.” He repeated, quieter, after a moment.

...That was it, then?? Were you being an idiot to expect him to say anything more? You hesitantly prompted him anyways, “I’m done, it's your turn to say something now.”

Dave seemed to stare at the floor while he thought, sending the room into a quietness that seemed to last forever. When he finally spoke you got the feeling that you had missed a lot of segue, “Can you stay?”

The question took you by surprise, “What, stay here?” Your mind snapped back to your tentative plan of how to undermine Rose in order to regularly get to see your brother and you instantly shut it back down again. But the idea of actually spending a day together slipped through the walls and filled your mind with light and color for a split second. You could imagine it as clearly as a memory, thanks to all the times your mind had wandered to topic. You could almost hear Dave telling you stupid jokes or complaining about his day or mocking the dumb questions asked by interviewers, could almost smell the leather seats of his car while the two of you drove somewhere, anywhere, trading everything from mindless jokes to questions about the universe for hours. “Uh. No.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that: please stay. For just a day or two. I feel like we have about three hundred things to ask each other and talk about and explain and I don't see how we’re going to get everything laid out on the tables and sorted through in just a few hours. I know I personally have a few things to explain that I don't really want to do quickly, you know?”

“I can't, Rose-”

“Man, fuck Rose,” He leaned forward in his chair with sudden, subdued but undeniable intensity that caught you a little off guard, “She’s had you all to herself for years, it's time she learned to share. Besides, do you really want to see her right now? Like, you do realise that you can take basically any one of our problems and link it directly to her perfectly manicured hands.”

“I wouldn't say that was... completely true.”

“It is. We could’ve had this little powwow years ago, but Rose had to go Super Nanny on your ass and keep you locked up for seventeen years.”

“It's not entirely her fault though, I should have believed to you when I had the chance.”

“That's one very noble way to look at it. Another way, my personal point of view, is that you didn't give me a chance to explain because Rose raised you to distrust me, and I never pushed it because Rose convinced me that you wouldn't have listened. I probably would have gone to your house every week if had known you wanted to see me, so whose fault is it really?”

You almost flinched away from the words because you so badly wanted to believe them so badly but you _couldn't_. You couldn't let yourself get in any deeper than you already were. “Okay, you really need to stop saying shit like that.”

Dave’s eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly, “Shit like what?”

“Shit that makes you sound like you care. Talking about all this is hard enough as it is.”

“But I do care?”

“No, you don't.” There was no harshness or bitterness in your words. They fell blunt and honest.

“Uh. Pretty sure I do.”

“Hm.”

“Hey, no. Cut that out.”

“Cut what out?”

“That-” He made a vague gesture towards you, his voice level as always but quicker than normal, “That look, that ‘Dave, I don't buy a single word out of your whore mouth so stop spewing bullshit’ look. I swear I care about you, probably too much, even more now that I don't know we’re cool and I’m allowed fawn over you without having to feel creepy about it.” His hand reached up to slip his shades off and placed them on top of his head in a practiced, automatic movement that hardly brushed a single hair out of place. Probably to ensure his words were delivered with the kind of honesty you just can't get without eye contact but it mostly just distracted you to the point that you almost didn't hear what he said, “Come on, Dirk. You're too smart to honestly believe this mess you're trying to pull right now.”

When your eyes met his for the first time your stomach dropped to somewhere twelve miles below your shoes for more than one reason. First and foremost- you had always known Dave's eyes were ridiculously stunning, due to them being the striking red that they were, but they were even more incredible than you could have ever imagined. All the photographs in the world couldn't have capture their depth and you had the distinct feeling that every photo that tried would bring only you dull disappointment from here on out. The second reason was far more ridiculous than the first but affected you just as strongly. Even though you knew nothing had actually changed, without his shades on Dave now looked just how he did in your albums. He looked like your Dave, the brother you had grown to treasure and adore and you had spent your entire life desperately missing. How many times had you wished you could talk to him freely and not be surrounded by misunderstandings or hurt or fear and all the other bullshit that used to plague your feelings towards him? And here you were, in the same situation you had wasted hundreds of nights imagining, and you were pushing him away. He was inviting you into your favorite daydream and you were shutting him down.

But as much as every cell in your body was tingling with the urge to giddily accept his offer and set up camp right there in the living room consequences be damned, the fact remained you had only so much to gain and everything to lose. Did he even realize what he was asking of you? Did it cross his mind that you were saying no out of what little self preservation you had? You were being offered a lethal dose of your vice, and sure, you could enjoy the high while it lasted, but the more you took the worse it would be when you eventually came back down; by the time things went sour you would already be used to him being close, and you knew yourself well enough to know that it was be impossible to go back from that. How could you possible validate agreeing to resign yourself to that amount of heartbreak that as a smart decision?

You cleared your throat and broke eye contact to stare at the floor but your voice was still thin when you spoke, trying to find an out, “You don't know the first thing about me, how can you care about someone you don't know?”

“I know that you like robotics and ice cream. I know that when you’re thinking really hard your eyes kind of zone out and you go really still like a really cute spooked rabbit. I know my name was your first word,” Shit, was it really? “I know that when you were a baby Rose could struggle for hours to get you to stop crying but after seconds in my arms you you would be dead asleep, and believe me, that kind of shit fucks you in a really permanent sort of way. Besides, you know nothing about me either, but you somehow cared enough to come all the way here just because you thought I might feel upset at the idea that my brother doesn't like me.”

Ah. Touché. “That's different,” you told the carpet, as if saying the words out loud would somehow fool either one of you. It certainly felt different to you, but you knew he had a good point.

Dave stood up, “I don't see a difference. And using me not knowing things about you as an excuse to not allow me to get to know you is locking yourself in an unfortunate catch twenty two. If you want to leave it's totally fine, but if you want to stay and are saying you don’t want to for bullshit reasons then you’re getting in your own way by over complicating something that’s really simple and could be a really good thing, just- cmon, dude.”

Something clicked for you. Something you had known in your mind but hadn’t quite set in. He was asking this for himself. You looked at him curiously, at those beautiful eyes that you knew would be the end of you and said, “But you want me to stay.”

“Yes. Absolutely, please.”

“Then okay.”

Dave seemed to make to speak, then realise what you had said and stop himself, leaving his mouth slightly open as if he was genuinely surprised that you were swayed so easily, “Wait, okay as in… are you…?”

You shrugged noncommittally, not wanting to think about how fucking irresponsible and irrational you were being. “Just for a day, right?”

An honest, excited smile bloomed across Dave’s face and you swore the entire room grew brighter. You swore that the very air buzzed with vitality and a promise that the world wasn’t entirely cold and lonely and dark, a promise that things would be better. You had to break eye contact, ears warm, overwhelmed by the tingling warmth that overflowed the moment you realised you had caused him to smile the same breathtaking smile that you had been dreaming of ever since you found that picture in Rose’s safe.

“Yeah! Sure, anything, a day, two day, a week, six weeks, anything. Whatever you want, it’s up to you.”

Maybe, despite the fact that you have a sinking feeling that you had just dug the first shovel of dirt out of your grave, maybe this was the right choice. All this, questioning Rose and then coming here and agreeing to stay, had led to something so valuable and had worked out so well, so how could it be a mistake?

How could this be a mistake when, for the first time in your life, you were excited for tomorrow?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and... scene. congrats, you just read 12,440 more words of trash, setting the word count of this fucker over the official length of a novella, which also makes it officially the longest continual thing i have ever written. just some fun facts for ya. 
> 
> if we're being honest here i'll be lucky to get an update to yall by 413. but that is my goal. and i will try.


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